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COEVRIGHT ilEPOSm 




I 



I 



The 

Home God Meant 



By 



George N. Luccock 

Pastor of the College Church 
Wooster, Ohio 




PHILADELPHIA 
THE WESTMINSTER PRESS 
1922 



.L77 



Copyright, 1922, 

BY 

F. M. Braselman 

Printed in the United States of America 

JUL 1 7 1922 

©CLA677587 



TO 

MY WIFE 

DEAR MATE AND MAKER OF THE HOME 
GOD MEANT FOR ME 



FOREWORD 



S the title indicates, the goal of these pages 



is the picturing of such a home as God 
would have men and women enjoy. However 
far short of the goal the reader, on reaching 
the last page, may feel that the writer has fallen, 
it is hoped that at least there will have been sug- 
gested a vision of The Home God Meant, with 
some measure of quickening to strive toward its 
attainment. 

The viewpoint of the book is that of the 
Master as he faced the home situation of his day. 
There were good homes then. He had been 
reared in one of them. It is not hard to see in 
his sayings many a reminiscence of the gracious 
home life that had sheltered his childhood and 
youth. But it was not so in all of the homes. 
Even religious leaders were sanctioning many a 
false standard of home relations. 

Jesus met such misguided teachings by saying 
that it was not so in the beginning. He would 
show us that the way up to better homes is the 
way back to the beginning, back to what was in 
the mind of God when he made man in his own 
image, male and female. 

This viewpoint is followed throughout the 
book. The attempt is made to range widely 




5 



6 



FOREWORD 



through matters of home interest, from the day 
of marriage to the day of giving in marriage; 
from that day when young man and maiden for- 
sake fathers and mothers to cleave to each other, 
for better or for worse, to that other wedding 
day, day of trust, when these twain in turn give 
son or daughter to forsake them and cleave to 
other flesh and blood. In every chapter, from 
whatever angle the home and the home folks are 
viewed, their tasks, their joys, and their sorrows, 
their mistakes and their sins and their repent- 
ings, their new starts and their hopes, always the 
point of view is what God has given us to under- 
stand of his creative purpose in making man in 
his own image, male and female. 

It is believed that a thoroughly Christianized 
home life would be one of the greatest forces in 
Kingdom progress. It is the earnest prayer of 
the writer that these modest pages may make 
some little contribution to that Christianizing 
process. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Foreword 5 

Chapter I These Twain 9 

Chapter II Teamwork 16 

Chapter III A Long Look Ahead 28 

Chapter IV Unto Them a Child Is Born 42 

Chapter V How Many Children? 55 

Chapter VI Chastened by Children 67 

Chapter VII Home Happiness 80 

Chapter VIII Family Faith 91 

Chapter IX Wise Unto Salvation 104 

Chapter X Nurture and Admonition 117 

Chapter XI Fitting for Fortune 131 

Chapter XII Finding Fellowship 147 

Chapter XIII Teaching Trustworthiness 165 

Chapter XIV Home Heights 177 

Chapter XV What Home Is For 192 



I 



THESE TWAIN 



9 



CHAPTER I 



THESE TWAIN 



YOUNG business man and his minister sat 



together at a business men's luncheon. 
"Well, Henry," began the minister, "I see you 
have had a specially fine New Year's Day. When 
did your happiness leave town?" 

"Yesterday. Unfortunately, being a school- 
teacher, she is subject to schedule." 

"And when are you going to change the 
schedule?" 

"Probably next fall." 

" That's just fine. We shall all be mighty glad to 
have Helen here. Will you buy, or build, or rent ? ' ' 

"Our plan is to rent for a while. The first 
winter we will do a lot of thinking and talking 
and projecting, Then we will either buy, if we 
can find what suits us, or, preferably, build ac- 
cording to our own ideas. I don't want to get a 
permanent home all ready before we are married. 
I want Helen here first, so that her ideas will go 
into our home." 

In that brief parley, the true note in the music 
of home-building had been sounded. The young 
man's voice was very gentle, suiting the restraint 




10 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



upon his spirit, as he spoke of holding all plans 
in suspension until they could work out their 
will together. That is the foundation idea for 
the home God meant. 

Just now these two are living many miles 
apart, engaged in different occupations, or, as it 
might be said in transposed phrase, in different 
occupations, engaged. They may have happy 
thoughts of each other, and dream dreams of 
and for each other, and it would be entirely 
possible for the young man to plan, build, and 
furnish an elegant home, all ready for his bride 
to enter and be crowned its queen, his queen. 
But, however nice for her that program might 
be, however it might ease her of the worries of 
planning and building, however pleasing to her 
womanly taste the elegance of her prepared home 
might be, in entering it in that way she would 
find it more difficult to become the queen God 
meant her to be than in the working out of the 
program these two have planned for themselves. 

The ideas of comradeship, mutual interest, 
mutual rights, mutual responsibility, are rooted 
and grounded in the beginnings of the joint life 
of a man and a woman. The moment these 
ideas cease to be honored, that moment home 
happiness and home stability are in jeopardy. 



THESE TWAIN 



11 



In some instances, more common now, doubtless, 
than formerly, marriage begins on a basis of 
affluence. There are indeed homes marvelously 
beautiful in their love and happiness, started on 
that basis. But the happiness in such homes is 
not, as many foolishly suppose, due to the afflu- 
uence, but in spite of it. That is to say, happi- 
ness here is built upon the same foundation that 
happiness is built upon in any home, rich or poor. 
Lives are bound together by struggle, by aspira- 
tion, by reaching with joined hands after what 
is not yet attained, by sharing work and disap- 
pointment and patience and hope, by enduring 
hard things together, by mutual comfort and 
cheer, by keeping step all along the rough road, 
by coming to the goal of success side by side, or 
side by side facing the fate of defeat, forever feel- 
ing that the best of all is that they have each other. 

Jesus forced back to the beginning the thoughts 
of those who were giving religious sanction to 
loose ideas of the sacredness and inviolability of 
the marriage bond. He recalled as the ulti- 
matum in the whole problem what had been 
said in the beginning, when God made man male 
and female, namely, that these two are to be- 
come one flesh. Male and female are different — 
different by divine purpose, different for human 



12 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



happiness, different in order to be one, different 
that each may lack something which the other 
can supply, different that each may give some- 
thing needed for the other's completeness, dif- 
ferent that each may profit by the strength of 
both, different that neither alone but both 
together may build the home God meant. There 
is nothing known to man more wonderful, more 
holy, more vital and useful, more capable of 
glory or degradation, more constructive or de- 
structive of human happiness, than the differ- 
ence between male and female. Upon that 
difference the highest home happiness is built. 
From that difference the most terrible of do- 
mestic tragedies spring. It is to be thought 
about, hallowed, guarded. The appalling record 
of easy divorce is possible just because men and 
women fail to guard and hallow and tenderly 
and devoutly think about the difference between 
male and female as due to the good hand of our 
God upon us. In making man male and female, 
God ordained that in mutual tenderness, in 
mutual respect, in mutual love, for the increas- 
ing joy of both, husband and wife should be one 
flesh. There can be no safe and sound ideas of 
home-making save by going back to the begin- 
ning, and facing fairly and reverently, modestly 



THESE TWAIN 



13 



and boldly, what God meant when he made man 
and woman so to be. 

While reverent regard for sex difference will 
sanctify passion, as it was meant to do, that differ- 
ence has a wider significance, and plays splendid 
part in far-reaching ranges of the effort to gain 
the home ideal. Both physically and mentally, 
while much alike, man and woman are different. 
There is a masculine way of looking at things, 
and there is a feminine way of looking at things. 
There is a man's way of thinking through a 
problem, and there is a woman's way of solving 
that problem. The significant thing is that both 
of these ways are important. It is to be under- 
stood, of course, that this is only a general ob- 
servation, and not an assertion of an invariable 
and perfectly obvious line of demarcation be- 
tween masculine logic and feminine intuition. 
Upon that difference, which is real, is to be 
built up by steadfast and uninterrupted devo- 
tion the habit of mutual counsel, of complete 
confidence and frankness. It is always danger- 
ous for a husband or a wife to have a secret 
from the other, and especially to have an out- 
side intimacy more confidential than that at 
home. 

There is more than one kind of hazard in- 



14 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



volved when either husband or wife keep the 
other unadvised of any ambition or purpose or 
undertaking. For one thing, there is the hazard 
of making a mistake. No one can afford to 
ignore the counsel of others. In business mat- 
ters, about the details of which she knows little, 
and therefore must guard herself against taking 
a dictatorial attitude, the wife's intuition is not 
seldom a surer suggestion of the wise course to 
be pursued than the husband's reasoned judg- 
ment. Her insight into the character of a smooth 
swindler is often clearer. It would be stupid 
even to suggest the laying down of an arbitrary 
rule requiring a husband to submit all business 
plans to the wife for her decision, or a rule re- 
quiring the wife to submit all household prob- 
lems to the husband for his oracular deliverance 
upon them. In either case a set of howling 
complications might ensue. The point is simply 
this, that counsel with each other, in all matters, 
is important, all important to both husband and 
wife, even from the point of view of business 
prosperity and smooth household management. 

But there is another point of view. That is 
the danger that husband and wife will grow 
apart, instead of growing together as God meant. 
It is a sad day in any home, when either of those 



THESE TWAIN 



15 



who have been mated for life is not interested 
in and does not care even to talk about what is 
much in the heart of the other. Too often 
it happens that, without really having meant to 
do it, a man and his wife drift into a state wherein 
it has come to pass that in the main interests 
of life their ways are as separate and individual 
as those of two bachelors dwelling on opposite 
sides of the city. Made one by marriage, they 
are becoming twain in their minds. It may be 
that they will have enough decency not to be di- 
vorced. But so drifting, so living, they are more 
and more becoming strangers to the home happi- 
ness God meant. 

The divine idea is that, just as Henry and 
Helen purposed in their hearts not to build or 
even plan a home till they could do it together, 
taking sweet counsel each of the other, so, all the 
days of a man with his wife upon the earth, they 
twain should be one, increasingly one flesh and 
one mind, continual kindling a common inter- 
est in all the things that concern either and both. 
Each is useless without the other. A certain sad 
man uttered a great truth in his brief but deeply 
significant reply to the question, "Where is 
your home, sir?" "I have no home," he said. 
"My wife died a year ago." 



16 



THE HOME GOD MEANT 



CHAPTER II 



TEAMWORK 




WO married men who had been school- 



confidential friends in the dormitory, and the 
most intimate of their confidences had been 
about a love affair. Now again came a situation 
for more confidences, more intimate, more re- 
vealing, more sacred, than any that had gone 
before. Each was eager to know, and as eager 
to tell, how marriage looked from his present 
viewpoint. 

The best that was in that talk is worth telling 
here. One of them had passed through some 
rather tempestuous courtship ordeals. It was a 
case of true love, must have been, for its course 
had not run at all smoothly. Some of the spite- 
fuls had openly condemned his wooing and 
maliciously hinted of troubles to come. But the 
troubles went elsewhere. For these two built a 
home of rare happiness and usefulness. That 
was because it was started in the right way. 

4 4 We began our living together in prayer, 
audible prayer. Each of us prayed that way. 
After we had read from the Bible and kneeled, I 



They had been 



TEAMWORK 



17 



offered my petitions for our home, and espe- 
cially that our God would bless my Mary. When 
I had finished my prayer, Mary prayed also, 
more briefly, for she was not used to audible 
prayer, as I was. She, too, asked that God 
would bless our home, and make us a blessing 
to each other. Also she prayed for particular 
blessings upon me, her husband. It was not an 
easy thing for either of us at first, but from the 
first it has been a blessed thing for both. We 
have found that when husband and wife pray 
that way together, they cannot get very far 
apart." 

Mark the finding: When husband and wife 
pray that way together, they cannot get very 
far apart. That sweetest of all promises to those 
who pray together, so often quoted as encourage- 
ment in a little prayer meeting which ought to 
be large, is rather suited to the conditions of the 
home life, even in the beginning of that home 
when as yet there are but two members. "For 
where two or three [even but two] are gathered 
together in my name, there am I in the midst of 
them." When those whom God has joined 
together keep the Master's presence in the midst 
of their home life, no man or woman can put 
them asunder. They are safe from the eternal 



18 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



triangle, and all other angles that make sharp 
corners and bad tempers in the house where 
people must dwell together. 

If there be teamwork in prayer, there will fol- 
low teamwork in all the games, and in all the 
labors, and in all the aspirations, and in all the 
fightings, and in all the trails of the whole home 
adventure. For marriage is a great adventure, 
a potentially continuous romance, with thrills 
and surprises and mysteries and terrors and 
ecstasies, sometimes with tragedies, and, to every 
honest pair, mated in God's will, with assurance 
of joy unspeakable. 

As with most heroic undertakings, the most 
baffling and difficult hindrance is the unexpected 
and the uncalculated, and this is often of the 
pettiest dimensions. One of the five or six 
greatest engineering feats of all history was the 
building of the Panama Canal. From many 
points of view it was difficult and daring. But 
one of the things that put the enterprise most 
in jeopardy was just the mosquito, the tiny, 
terrible mosquito. With the triumph over that 
menace, success was assured. Of the less than 
five or six great spiritual engineering feats to 
which home-building belongs, it may be con- 
fidently said that what is hardest to overcome is 



TEAMWORK 



19 



resident in little things, little things diffusing 
deadly poison, turning trust into suspicion, 
gentleness into harshness, frankness into sullen- 
ness, endearments into faultfindings, love into 
hatred, and issuing in despairing incompati- 
bility. 

Let it be taken from God, who made man and 
woman, and ordained that husband and wife 
shall cleave to each other until death shall part 
them, that the whole nagging, buzzing, stinging 
brood of insect invasions of the home can be 
destroyed as effectively as mosquitoes were 
dealt with in the building of the Panama canal. 
The secret is teamwork in prayer. 

Even horses running together in the field from 
the days when they were little colts until they are 
broken to harness, must be taught to pull to- 
gether in order to do good teamwork. So husband 
and wife, though they have been boy and girl 
playmates, when their lives are bound together 
by the vows of marriage, find the need, in this 
deeper acquaintance, of a new and often not 
easy mutual adjustment. They must fit them- 
selves to each other. They must learn to pull 
together in all things. If they find that tastes 
differ, that eagerness in one is matched by in- 
difference in the other, that what is very much 



20 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



desired sometimes must be gone without because 
it is disagreeable to the home companion, and 
that contrariwise something exceedingly dis- 
liked must be endured because it is necessary to 
the comfort of life's partner, it ought not to be 
thought that a strange thing has happened, or 
that these trials are above what is common to 
homes. Whatever of truth there may be in the 
saying that opposites attract, it is certain that 
within the most ardent attraction drawing hus- 
band and wife together, there are potential 
oppositions. Only the silliest of simpletons 
imagine that true love makes impossible the 
emergence of differences in desire. It is the 
mark of true love, not that it prevents tempera- 
mental differences, but that, when they occur, 
love controls and sanctifies them. 

Failure to grasp and hold fast to this quite 
elementary matrimonial truth leads to many a 
needless wreckage of what might be a very happy 
home life. Thus it is often hastily assumed, 
when bad-tempered clashings of will occur, that 
husband and wife never really loved each other 
and that therefore it will be better for everyone 
that they be divorced. It is further assumed 
that people who once or many times get very 
angry with each other, can never really and truly 



TEAMWORK 



21 



love each other again, even if they once did love 
devotedly, and that therefore they ought not to 
try to live together. Also, it is too often assumed 
that if husband and wife did not really love each 
other when they were married, it is impossible 
for them to learn to love each other after mar- 
riage, and therefore, having satisfied themselves 
that it was a mistake for them to get married, 
they conclude that the only way out of their 
misery and into happiness is to break their 
marriage vows. But every one of these is a false 
assumption. Until comparatively recent times, 
marriages for the most part were arranged by 
parents, yet very, very many such marriages were 
happy. It is quite true that our modern way 
is vastly superior. But in those earlier days 
husband and wife often learned to love each 
other devotedly after they were married. And 
no matter how little love there may have been 
at the marriage altar, although it is infinitely 
desirable that love should precede marriage, yet 
it is quite possible for it to be developed after 
marriage. Also, notwithstanding grievous dif- 
ferences and sore alienations, reconcilations are 
possible, and upon them may be built a wonder- 
fully tender home relation. Furthermore, it is 
an utterly false assumption that a man and a 



22 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



woman who really and truly are in love can 
have no clash of wills, or, that, having had un- 
happy differences, an all-controlling, fully satis- 
fying love cannot be reenthroned in both of 
their hearts. 

The stupidest of all shallow sayings about 
wedded life is that marriage is a lottery. One 
might just as truly say, on the basis of gambler's 
luck, that business is a lottery. Happy mar- 
riages do not happen, any more than normal 
fortunes. 

So, then, home builders have as their mutual 
task to fit themselves together. They are to 
discipline themselves in learning the art of pull- 
ing together in all things. Their interests, their 
responsibilities, their undertakings, their whole 
outlook henceforth must be reckoned one. The 
romance of home life, more wonderful than the 
romance of courtship, is meant to be a beautiful 
blending of the sentimental and the practical, 
the practical being the trellis on which the 
arbor growth of sentiment is to be trained. In 
some things the husband must lead in shaping 
the program, as, for example, in determining the 
time of meals in relation to business demands. 
In some things the wife must lead in shaping the 
program, as, for example, in arranging social 



TEAMWORK 



23 



engagments and in planning odd jobs about the 
home for holidays and other leisure hours. In 
some things both must join in shaping the pro- 
gram, as, for example, in planning savings 
accounts, benevolences, forming church and 
prayer-meeting habits. These things, and many 
like them, are important in themselves, belong 
to the necessities of making a home. They also 
have a very great indirect relation to the adven- 
ture of marriage. The doing of these things, 
the mutual observance of these relations, now of 
leadership, now of following, and again of jointly 
thought-out programs, will tend to perfect the 
adjustment of life to life, will make the energies 
of lives which before marriage were separate 
streams now one current. 

One of the great urgencies in the starting of a 
home is an appreciation of the importance of 
getting together, and keeping together, of hav- 
ing frequent talks about everything in which 
either is at all interested, Home life soon gets 
to going in one of two directions, either in the 
direction of congeniality or in the direction of 
incompatibility. Both the virtue and the vice 
come as a growth. Neither, except in very 
limited area, is pronounced at the start. No 
two people ever feel themselves incompatible, 



24 



THE HOME GOD MEANT 



when they are planning the wedding. Therefore, 
they are never necessarily incompatible. If the 
mood in which weddings are planned were kept 
up, no home would ever go to wreck on the 
rock of incompatibility. Neither are any two 
people in all things congenial when they are 
married. 

It is quite true that some couples start life 
together having far more tastes in common than 
others. But in all cases there are great ranges 
of congeniality that have to be developed. Be 
thankful that in all cases this fine asset of the 
home listed as congeniality may be developed. 
Happy is that union wherein each one resolves, 
"I'm going to learn to like the things that my 
mate likes." There is a companion resolution 
well worth pondering, namely this: "As for me, 
I'm going to sacrifice whatever useless habit I 
have that is offensive to my dear one." 

A pair of temptations must be noted in this 
connection, the one, though not always so, more 
commonly that of the man, and the other like- 
wise, though not always so, more commonly the 
temptation of the woman. The temptation more 
natural to the woman, since it is proper to con- 
sider "ladies first, " is to be the whole conscience 
for the home. No good woman has any real 



TEAMWORK 



25 



intention of taking advantage of her husband by 
putting him in the wrong. It is an advantage, 
however, in defending one's attitude toward a 
question about which there is a difference of 
opinion, to reduce that question to a moral issue, 
and then charge the party of the second part 
with holding to what is " wrong." It makes 
anyone, particularly a woman — for it is given to 
her to lead in appreciation of moral values — in- 
wardly comfortable to feel, in a difference, that 
one is contending, not for a private opinion, but 
for righteousness. There is a danger that even a 
good wife in her zeal for what she considers right 
may become an unconscious faultfinder, and 
without knowing it make her husband care more 
for his club than for his home. It is a delicate 
responsibility which God has committed to 
woman in endowing her with so fine a moral 
sense. The good wife that is of the Lord not 
only brings moral support to a good man in all 
his worthiest aspirations, but, even more, she is 
his inspiration in sheer ability to see which way 
righteousness leads. A gift so fine, with a use 
so high, should be zealously guarded against 
perversion. 

The temptation more natural to the husband, 
just as subversive of home happiness if yielded 



26 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



to, is to withdraw from social life. He has been 
grinding all day, has had his temper ruffled a 
dozen times and his patience tried to the limit, 
and when the day's work is done he feels that 
there is no place like home. The wifely suggestion 
that they return some calls that evening is 
particularly inopportune. Of course he will not 
go. It is not to be thought of. But that is not 
the end of it. It riles him, and keeps him riled, 
that the suggestion could have been made. If 
his situation were appreciated, such inopportune 
suggestions never would be made. Before he 
knows it, if he is unwatchful, he will habitually 
come home ready to be irritated by any sug- 
gestion that would take him out of his groove. 
He is grooming to become a grouch. He forgets 
that while his day has been full of variety, that 
of his wife has been fairly monotonous. The 
contacts of the day have sufficed to satisfy any 
cravings for social touch that may be in his 
heart. Wife's day, however, especially young 
wife's day, is normally one of social fasting, 
unless she has gotten into the currents carrying 
so many away from home enthusiasms, and, if 
he does not watch, his irritableness will make 
her care more for afternoons out than for eve- 
nings in, with him at home. And so, while he 



TEAMWORK 



27 



earns the living, and does it proudly, and while 
she keeps his home neat and attractive, and does 
it loyally, these two, caring for each other, oh, 
yes, surely caring for each other, are really living 
quite separate lives. They are developing in- 
compatibility which, while it may not become 
so bad-tempered as to drive them to the divorce 
court, does become so real as to cheat them out 
of the highest home happiness, because, instead 
of becoming more congenial, they are becoming 
less congenial. 

It behooves both husband and wife to deter- 
mine to be interested in all that interests either ; 
to study to be approved, each by the other; to 
keep the door of frankness open between their 
hearts; to be forever striving to widen the area 
of things in which they have a common interest, 
and to keep striving each to reduce as much as 
may be the area of things in which but one can 
have an interest; to work toward uttermost, 
happy congeniality. For they are mated for 
teamwork so long as both shall live. 



28 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



CHAPTER III 
A LONG LOOK AHEAD 

AFTER the marriage ceremony, at the first 
> breakfast by themselves, the bride and 
groom ought to begin planning their golden wedd- 
ing. They tell us that the average length of life 
is on the increase. We read more often than for- 
merly of fiftieth anniversaries. At any rate, homes 
ought to be started in the expectation of dura- 
tion, and the people in them ought to five as if 
they were sure to live together for at least half 
a century. They ought to resolve to live as they 
would wish they had done in the year of jubilee. 

The owner of a hundred newspapers, pos- 
sessing great fortune and wide influence, was 
being interviewed. He had begun in poverty, 
had toiled the upward road, and had won the 
summit of wealth and honor. The interviewer 
asked him to name the maxim that had been 
of most value to him in his life. His answer was 
to quote an old saying by Pascal, 4 'To foresee is 
to rule." An example of his foresight was his 
recognition of a coming scarcity, if not a famine, 
in the paper industry. Also he saw how the War 
might cut off supplies from sources then being 



A LONG LOOK AHEAD 



29 



heavily drawn upon. He purchased a tract of 
woodland embracing three thousand square 
miles in Newfoundland and developed his own 
adequate paper industry. The War came, and 
so did the stringency in the paper market. But 
he was prepared. He ruled his business because 
he had foreseen. 

It is not required of everyone to be as astute 
as Lord Northcliffe, or to do business on so vast 
a scale. But every home builder, to reach his 
own maximum of happiness and usefulness, 
must look ahead, must even take a long look 
ahead. And he must discipline himself to live 
according to the call of that distant goal. Esau 
was called a profane person because he did not 
look ahead, because a present pleasure meant 
more to him than future service. Many a home 
has been desecrated in the same spirit. Living 
for present ease and indulgence, rather than in 
view of responsibilities bound to come, responsi- 
bilities growing of necessity out of home rela- 
tions, and necessary to the happiest home re- 
lations, has meant disappointment, trouble, and 
bitterness to many a promising home. 

An ideal home is a perpetual honeymoon. At 
Christmas time we talk about having the Christ- 
mas spirit throughout the year. In the joy of wed- 



30 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



ding days, we exclaim, "0 that the blessedness 
of this time might always be in the hearts of 
these two!" And it may be. It was meant to 
be. That aspect of the way to have it so with 
which we are here concerned has to do with con- 
serving the conditions which determine that 
blessedness. By this is meant learning to do 
from the beginning those things that make for 
mutual good will, mutual trust, mutual ministry. 
And what are the things that make for mutual 
good will, mutual trust, mutual ministry? Obvi- 
ously self-denial, thoughtfulness, forethought, 
anticipating the other's wish and providing to 
meet it, getting ready for trying experiences so 
as to ease them as far as possible, dreaming and 
talking of future good to be enjoyed together. 
All of which means that two people who expect 
to live together a long time, and want to live 
together a long time, need, from the day they 
begin to live together to put into practice the 
virtues which common sense tells them will be 
needed for their comfort in later life. If these 
virtues are not initiated in the honeymoon, they 
are apt to be missing when they are most needed, 
in the dark of the moon. 

Among the homely virtues indispensable to 
making life a continued love story is thrift. It 



A LONG LOOK AHEAD 



31 



may be described, for the purpose of this para- 
graph, as the habit of saving. The point to be 
here emphasized is that the habit should begin 
with the first breakfast in the new home. Almost 
everyone will agree that people ought to start 
the habit of saving — sometime. It is part of the 
urgency of this book that, to cultivate the art of 
living together, married people should begin 
their joint habit of saving at the time they are 
married. That is the best time to begin most 
things that are not easy. And saving is not easy. 
Like everything else hard to start, it is better 
begun when the feelings are warmest. 

It is rather easier to start saving on a small 
salary than to start saving on a large salary. 
For one who in the days of small income formed 
the habit of saving, it is not difficult to make 
a margin with the larger income. But for the 
man who, through all his struggling years spent 
all he made, finding, as he is sure to do, that 
with every advance in salary expenses show a 
tendency to increase more rapidly than the 
income, it is definitely harder to start saving 
when he is ten years out, though his income be 
trebled, than when he first began to support a 
wife. Beginning when the home game is young, 
husband and wife can glide into the habit of 



32 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



saving. The longer they delay the start, the 
more surely they must create the habit only as 
by revolution. It is as much a matter of psychol- 
ogy as of money. At bottom, it is a question 
of the will to save. All conditions favor the will 
to save in the early morning of married life. 

Many things in modern life make against 
starting the habit of saving. Keeping up ap- 
pearances is one of them. The courage to be 
different is rare. The notion that the cost of liv- 
ing is so very high, and that everyone is having 
a hard time because of it, that therefore no one 
really expects to save anything and all of us 
ought to be thankful just to make ends meet, is 
responsible for a most unhealthy contentment 
with a situation where the monthly check barely 
meets the monthly bills. Conditions do arise 
where business men find the annual inventory 
showing a loss rather than a profit. There are 
times when frugal men are and ought to be glad 
if current income covers current expenses. For 
a man who has the habit of saving established, 
this is not disastrous. But with the man who 
does not have the habit of saving established, 
the case is different. The most serious thing 
with him is his mental attitude toward his finan- 
cial situation. What threatens his financial 



A LONG LOOK AHEAD 



33 



future is that he feels that he has a perfectly 
good excuse for not starting to save. Some other 
day for beginning the habit of saving will be more 
favorable. He is developing into the kind of man 
who is always able to give a good excuse for his 
failures. Being able to give a good reason why 
a thing is not done is just about as good to him 
as getting the job done. For a very good reason, 
in fact because it is a part of religion, becoming 
thrifty is like becoming a Christian — the longer 
beginning is delayed, the harder it is to start. 
One may even go much further and say that 
every pay day a man puts off starting to save he 
is doing something to make it more certain that 
he will never start to save. 

The larger question of business success is tied 
up with this seemingly small matter of the habit 
of saving. A man who for any cause has unhappi- 
ness in his home goes to his work like a prisoner 
dragging a chain and ball. It is easy to put pep 
into work when one goes from his home to his 
office with the song of the lark in his heart. He 
cannot do that, no matter how love dwells in 
and rules that home, if he has reason to fear for 
the comfort of his family. Here are two things 
to be taken into the reckoning. One is the 
misery of insufficient means for home comforts. 



34 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



The other is the mental handicap which that 
situation puts upon the breadwinner of the 
family. Both are serious. The classic advice 
touching this point, was given by one Wilkins 
Micawber: 4 'My other piece of advice, Copper- 
field, you know. Annual income twenty pounds, 
annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. 
Annual income twenty pounds, annual expendi- 
ture twenty pounds ought and six, result misery. 
The blossom is blighted, the leaf is withered, the 
God of day goes down upon the weary scene, 
and — and in short you are forever floored." 

Saving for future needs, for future comforts 
and satisfaction, is but part of thrift. Every 
home ought to have a Lord's treasury. Like a 
beautiful street with park space on either side, 
every income ought to have two margins. One 
of these should be for Kindgom calls, the other 
for family accumulations. " Give a tenth and 
save a tenth" is a good slogan for the minimum 
of thrift. As income increases, these margins 
may be broadened. But no man and woman 
whom God has joined together for the adventure 
of life ought to be satisfied with any domestic 
program that will leave them with less than a 
ten per cent margin of saving on each side of 
their expense account. Let them be well assured 



A LONG LOOK AHEAD 



35 



that faithful, proportionate, systematic giving to 
God makes a very great contribution to home 
happiness. And the time to begin that is at the 
first week end of their new home life. 

This Lord's treasury is necessary as a pre- 
ventive of an evil that lurks in the wake of the 
virtue of saving. Every virtue has its corre- 
sponding vice, and the vice corresponding to the 
virtue of saving is the inordinate love of money. 
He who has learned to save has learned but half 
the value of thrift, the half, too, that if culti- 
vated by itself will blight rather than bless the 
home. The love of money may take different 
directions of hurtful effect. It may become 
miserliness, hoarding and gloating over gold for 
its own sake, with snarling and grudging at every 
call. The miser, though he have millions, can- 
not create the home God meant. Or the love of 
money may take the direction of self-indulgence, 
of excessive satisfaction in luxury, of uttermost 
selfishness in life. It may develop shrewdness 
and success, it may accumulate a fortune, it may 
provide for its own, but, if uninterested in the 
larger service of which great wealth is capable, it 
will bring more care than comfort. 

If one cared only for comfort, it might be a 
good prayer to ask for neither riches nor poverty. 



36 



THE HOME GOD MEANT 



But if one cares for the comfort that is in service, 
he will not shrink from the responsibility of 
riches, but will make all the money he honestly 
can. He will not love it for its own sake, neither 
will he cling to it in a spirit of self-indulgence; 
rather he will command his soul to care for it as 
the steward of God, and will joyfully scatter it 
as he has opportunity to do good with it. This 
learning to use money for God is one of the first 
lessons to be studied in the school of domestic 
science that is started when a man and a woman 
become husband and wife. 

The other values of promptly initiated sys- 
tematic giving must not be overlooked. For one 
thing, honoring God in this way begets a sense 
of the presence of God in the home which is 
invaluable as a means of home happiness. For 
another thing, it develops the gift of manage- 
ment. It calls for planning, for considering com- 
parative needs and urgencies, for thoughtful, 
wise distribution. Also it keeps one intelligent as 
to his financial situation. He is not drifting 
financially when he is giving proportionately. 
That is one reason why tithers ordinarily pros- 
per. The habit of scrutinizing details for syste- 
matic giving develops mental qualities that make 
for efficiency in other responsibilities. 



A LONG LOOK AHEAD 



37 



It is a serious mistake to think that proportion- 
ate giving should be delayed until a larger income 
is being received. What is involved in it is so 
interwoven with the whole of life's good, and so 
directly connected with every stage in home- 
building, that it ought to be one of the first prin- 
ciples adopted in the starting of a new home. 
Along with its other advantages, it greatly in- 
creases the joy. There is a blessing in the com- 
radeship of planning gifts in Christ's name. 
Paul's advice is most excellent for all, but 
especially for newly weds : " Remember the words 
of the Lord Jesus, that he himself said, It is 
more blessed to give than to receive." 

There is a curious inconsistency in the conduct 
of a great many people who have convinced 
themselves that they cannot afford to be pro- 
portionate givers, that they even cannot afford 
to save regularly a part of each month's income. 
Most of them buy many things on the install- 
ment plan, quite oblivious of the fact that they 
are thus rigorously proportionate givers — to the 
merchant of whom they bought. They are 
assured that the goods are sold to them on a 
cash basis, that it is only to get their trade that 
the concession of monthly payments is made to 
them. But the merchant's side of the transac- 



38 



THE HOME GOD MEANT 



tion must be considered. He must have interest 
on the money tied up in the goods sold on the 
installment plan. Moreover, occasionally a 
purchaser fails to pay out. Some losses are 
inevitable. The merchant must protect himself 
against these. In other words, the buyer on the 
installment plan must ordinarily pay enough 
extra to give the merchant a fair interest on the 
money tied up in the goods sold on that plan, 
in addition to that protection against some in- 
evitable losses. Taken as a whole the business 
must pay the merchant a reasonable profit. 

Occasionally the installment plan renders a real 
service, but, taken by and large, it is admirably 
adapted to keep the noses of the unthrifty on the 
grindstone. The advantages of " pay as you go" 
are preeminent for people marrying on a small 
income. A young minister and his wife, begin- 
ning life as home missionaries, determined to do 
without what they could not pay for when they 
got it. It meant at times considerable pinching, 
and once when payments due were delayed, it 
meant nothing in the house to eat. But even then 
they determined that they would make it a rule to 
give a tenth and save a tenth. So far as giving 
was concerned, the rule was never even sus- 
pended. They kept exact account of every penny 



A LONG LOOK AHEAD 



39 



received and spent. Every time a cent took its 
sad departure from the lonely little company in 
the parsonage purse, it was given honorable men- 
tion in the financial history of the house. They 
found it easier to play the installment game with 
themselves. Instead of buying furniture at so 
much per month, they placed so much per month 
in the savings account. And when they bought, 
they paid cash. It was just as easy to let the 
monthly installments accumulate money for 
them as for the merchant, and when they went 
to buy they were just as well pleasing to the 
merchant, for they came with cash in hand. 

It is altogether a misconception that the game 
of saving is more fascinating when playing with 
a big surplus in income than when struggling to 
make a margin with a small income. Rather the 
greater fascination is in the close game. It is 
little fun to watch a one-sided game of ball, and 
less to be in it. Saving loses its zest when the 
bases do not have to be watched to win out. 
When the young minister mentioned in the last 
paragraph was about to get married, he advised 
the Home Board of his intentions, and ventured 
to suggest that as a married man he ought to 
have his $700 salary increased to $800. To this 
the Board promptly agreed. But when the 



40 



THE HOME GOD MEANT 



young man found how a dollar divided is hap- 
piness doubled, and how in the market of life's 
highest good the purchasing power of a dollar is 
increased when its expenditure is planned by a 
pair, he rather felt that he had made a mistake. 
It seemed as if he could well have afforded to 
ask for a reduction rather than an increase of 
salary! It is devoutly to be wished that young 
people of to-day could get out of their minds the 
notion that a large income is necessary to the 
beginnings of home life, and also the notion that, 
having begun married life on a small income, 
their happiness depends on their living like 
people who have more money. 

It is to be kept in mind that the spirit devel- 
oped in the first stages of home-making is alto- 
gether likely to be the spirit to the end. That 
fact gives the highest value to the things that 
happen in the first years of married life. By 
and by, please God, there will be others, given 
of God to live in that home. When they are 
born there, much of their future will depend on 
the atmosphere of the home into which they are 
born. And so, when in the first period of mar- 
ried life husband and wife are cultivating thrift, 
practicing economy and self-denial, watching 
their savings, studying how to make their giving 



A LONG LOOK AHEAD 



41 



count most for the Kingdom, and through such 
study developing the bond between them and 
Christ, they are giving character to the home in 
which their children are to be born and reared. 
As David said that God in his goodness had 
spoken of his house "for a great while to come," 
so they are doing for their house. 

But there is something yet more important in 
this long look ahead, tending to the kind of home 
that children have a right to be born in. That 
is the atmosphere of prayer. When wishing 
happiness to a bride and groom, be concrete. 
Put definite things in the wish. Desire for them 
that when they reach the new home to which 
they have been looking forward, and cross its 
threshold, they may feel a Presence there, un- 
seen but real, as if God himself were giving his 
benediction to their union. Desire that they 
may build an altar there, the fires of which shall 
never go out, in whose light and warmth and 
cheer all the sorrows of life shall be softened and 
all its joys hallowed. There is no holier, more 
tender, more blessed moment in the life of a 
man and woman, than when, as husband and 
wife, they kneel together for their first prayer in 
their own dear home. 



42 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



CHAPTER IV 
UNTO THEM A CHILD IS BORN 
HE home is one place where it is not true 



crowd." The coming of a child strengthens, 
exalts, sweetens the love between husband and 
wife. God have mercy on the pair who would 
consider a child an intruder upon their happiness ! 
It is not given to every wife to be a mother. Now 
and then it happens that a woman's health will 
not permit the hazard of motherhood, and far be 
it from anyone to sit in judgment upon any hus- 
band and wife, saying, "These are sinners, 
because they are childless." But if any are 
willfully childless, choosing to have it so, to 
escape the pain and trouble and interference with 
their own pleasures, they commit a great sin. 
An old saint, confronting a man who rather 
boastfully paraded the fact that there were no 
children in his home and pridefully declared that 
he meant to see to it that none came, said 
quietly, ' ' My friend, if I could bring myself to 
think that way and act that way, I should be 
afraid to meet God." 

It is of no little significance that the Bible 




company, and three are a 



UNTO THEM A CHILD IS BORN 



43 



takes pains to record that childless women con- 
sidered their lot a calamity, and that when 
unexpected promise of motherhood came, the 
assurance was hailed as signalizing the special 
favor of their God. With joy and pride, they 
declared, "God hath taken away my reproach." 
It is interesting to note Luke's comment upon 
the conduct of Elisabeth after she and Zacharias 
had received the promise of a son. The beloved 
physician writes that she "hid herself five 
months, saying, Thus hath the Lord done unto 
me in the days wherein he looked upon me, to 
take away my reproach among men." If she 
hid herself five months, and then came out of 
hiding, to be seen of her neighbors, it was because 
she knew that they would from this time forth 
know that God had taken away her reproach. 
It is not a matter for fear of idle gossip, as though 
a woman, having such a hope from God, should 
shrink from publicity. Rather the nobly femi- 
nine feeling is one of exaltation, of deep, quiet joy 
in the wonderful event to which she is looking 
forward. 

Consider the two nativities marking respec- 
tively the coming of the first-born in the two 
creations of humanity. One is the babe outside 
of Eden. The other is the Babe of Bethlehem. 



44 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



For the first there was no room in man's earthly 
paradise. For the other there was no room in 
the inn. What firmaments of distance between 
Eve, the mother of Cain, and Mary, the mother 
of Jesus, and what infinities of space between 
those two children, conceived as fulfillments of 
God's promise and purpose. But is it sure that 
Mary was any more thrilled with awe and ex- 
ultation than Eve? Eve had her magnificat, as 
well as the mother of our Lord. She felt the 
burden of sin, felt it heavy upon her heart which 
awhile ago had not known its weight. Like the 
Virgin she was dreaming of a deliverer. A child 
had been promised her. It had been said of her 
seed that he would bruise the head of the des- 
troyer of their Edenic innocence. And as she 
held in her glad arms the first-born of humanity, 
she sang for joy, "I have gotten a man with 
the help of Jehovah." 

And so she had. Let her rejoice in her child 
while she can. Let none intimate that there is 
here no beginning of happiness that is of heaven, 
no heart-opening experience of fellowship be- 
tween God and his human image. Do not say 
that the child is not of God. Cain will be a 
murderer, the slayer of his own brother. He 
will be a fugitive and a vagabond. He will prove 



UNTO THEM A CHILD IS BORN 



45 



a bitter disappointment to his parents, and in 
their disappointment they will taste of the 
sharper sorrow of sin. In their first-born they 
will learn how sin alienates and builds barriers 
and covers the sky with clouds and breaks up 
the joy fellowship of love. Were they mistaken 
then, in thinking that they had, in the coming of 
Cain, "gotten a man with the help of Jehovah"? 
In part, yes. In part, no. They were mistaken 
in so far as they thought that this was the whole 
meaning of the promise that in their seed should 
be accomplished the redemption of their souls. 
They were right, emphatically right, in reckon- 
ing this child to be from God. 

The mystery of childbirth with its spiritual 
spell was upon them no less than upon the little 
group around the holy Child in the manger at 
Bethlehem. Just as there were marvel and 
solemn suggestiveness of the hidden authorship 
of God in human life at the miraculous birth of 
Jesus, so to Adam and Eve there were mystery 
and awe and the solemn pledge of God's near- 
ness in the natural birth of the first-born child 
of man. Not yet, not for long ages yet, would 
come to the full flower the promise made to the 
mother of us all, the perfection of that mystery 
of life born of a woman, to go against the mighty 



46 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



power of human sin with the ocean tides of 
divine strength. But, however faint and flicker- 
ing that light was, it was a foregleam of the true 
light, a real bit of "the light which lighteth 
every man, coming into the world." With the 
coming of that first child into the first human 
home was a real coming of the Lord. It was 
God who taught Eve's heart to say, "I have 
gotten a man with the help of Jehovah." And 
in our day as in that day, in every home where 
a child is born, along with the coming of the 
child we may, and ought to, expect a coming 
of God. 

Strangely, very strangely again, does God 
make the paternal longing for a child the channel 
of his progressive self -manifestation to his friend 
Abraham. He blends here with very wonderful 
tenderness the promise of a child with the proffer 
of himself , so that side by side with the expectation 
of a son there should he in the mind of Abraham 
an expectation of God. In the sweet thought 
about a child which even in their old age should 
be to him and the wife of his youth there was 
mingled the assurance of the manifestation of 
God's presence. Two things God said to Abra- 
ham on a great occasion in his life, and in the 
midst of a horror of great darkness. They were 



UNTO THEM A CHILD IS BORN 



47 



essentially the same things said to the shepherds 
in the night of the birth of Jesus. One was, 
" Fear not." The other was, " Unto you a child." 
Two bright stars shone in that midnight dark- 
ness of Abraham's sky, and shone side by side, 
stars of hope. One was the sure hope of a child. 
The other was the sure hope of God. The ex- 
pectation of a coveted child was inseparable in 
the mind of the friend of God from the expec- 
tation of God himself. For God, in effect, had 
said unto him, " Fear not, Abram, thine own child 
shall be thine heir," "Fear not, Abram, I am thy 
shield, and thy exceeding great reward." 

Having a child in the home is one of the 
surest ways of knowing God in the home. Always 
fascinating is the face of the child. The picture 
of the boy Jesus talking with the teachers at the 
Temple has as one of its most suggestive fea- 
tures the peculiarly interested and kindly ex- 
pression on the faces of the men immediately 
in front of Jesus, whose own expression is thus 
the more reflected in theirs. The effect, the sun- 
light effect, of the boy face upon those man 
faces is possibly the most arresting thing in the 
picture. 

When Jesus would go into the deep places of 
the hearts of his disciples with his most search- 



48 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



ing message concerning the Kingdom, he placed 
a little child in the midst of them, and while 
their eyes were focused on the child's face, he gave 
them such an understanding of the truth as 
never before had gone through their ears into 
their hearts. After all, there is nothing like the 
companionship of a child to warm the heart and 
open the susceptibilities of the spirit. A little 
group of ministers who were touring Palestine 
on a quiet afternoon planned a walk of several 
miles up the shore of Galilee from Tiberias to 
the rocky elevation back of Magdala, that they 
might have the particularly fine view of the lake 
to be obtained there. For their guide and com- 
panion they had a little Syrian boy about twelve 
years of age. He was such a boy as Jesus might 
have been, when he went at that age to the 
Temple, and straightway that winsome lad 
found his place in the hearts of the men. Who 
could ever forget his singing, "Jesus loves me, 
this I know, for the Bible tells me so." For those 
ministers that afternoon there was a new tender- 
ness in the saying, "A little child shall lead 
them." 

It is a part of the mission of child life in the 
home to call forth and develop the tenderness 
that is inherent in human hearts. That call 



UNTO THEM A CHILD IS BORN 



49 



comes with the first expectancy of a child. Some 
husbands do not know until they learn it by 
experience, often not until they have ignorantly 
caused a good deal of heartache, that during the 
periods preceding childbirth a woman must go 
through many and various ordeals. Day by 
day her burdens increase. She is subject to 
peculiar trials both in body and in mind. It is 
a period in which it is very easy for husband and 
wife to grow apart, in which misunderstandings 
readily arise, in which faultfindings may break 
out. On the other hand, it is a time for proving 
the magnanimity of conjugal love, for binding 
companion hearts into a closer union, for appre- 
hension of the finer things in married life. 

Now is the chance for a husband to love his 
wife as Christ loved the Church and gave him- 
self for it. She is risking her life that she may 
give birth to a child that will bear his name. 
While she has her days of joy, she also has her 
nights of terror. Women do die in childbearing, 
and as her time approaches, it is not strange 
that she should have to fight off fears. It is 
a part of the price she must pay for glorious 
motherhood. Now is the time, if ever, when 
the husband is called upon to show himself a 
true lover, a lover who loves his wife and cares 



50 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



for her as tenderly as he cares for his own flesh. 
What husband can ever forget the time when 
his young wife told him of the things she would 
want him to do for her, in case she should not 
survive her ordeal? One by one she went over 
her peculiar treasures, and gave directions what 
to do with this, to whom to give that, and all as 
if it had been borne in upon her soul that pru- 
dence required that this conditional disposition 
of her cherished possessions should be made. 
And then the day came, with its anxious hours 
of waiting, with the pitiful pains by which every 
child comes into the world, until at last a new 
and unfamiliar cry is heard, the cry that tells 
the old, old story that a man child is born into 
the world. To every man, if he be the husband 
God meant, the mother of his child will have 
for him the beauty of a Madonna. 

And what has come to pass ? Much every way. 
Where there had been two, there are now three, 
or possibly four. Blessed be twins! Where 
there had been love, there is now more and more 
tender love. And this increase in love is not 
merely because there are more people to love 
and be loved. It is also richly true that there is 
more love between husband and wife. The little 
child which God gave them to love has mys- 



UNTO THEM A CHILD IS BORN 



51 



teriously refined and increased their love for each 
other. Also, if they are rightly exercised by the 
whole experience, they find themselves possessed 
of a more radiant love for God. He has been so 
good to them. He has gone with them through 
the valley and the shadow. He has turned fear 
into joy. He has given them a new responsi- 
bility wherein dwells the need of him, and as 
touching that need he has given exceeding great 
and precious promises. The entire situation is 
set for a closer communion with God. The very 
name of God takes on a new and deeper sanctity. 
And this feeling toward the name of God will 
grow with all the growing years of the child. 

By as much as the father feels the upward, 
trusting, admiring look of his child toward him, 
his thought in turn will be directed reverently 
and adoringly toward God. In the early period of 
a child's life, the attitude toward true parents 
is all but worshipful, and no man with a good 
heart can fail to be moved with a desire to be 
worthy of that esteem, or fail to derive from it 
a new appreciation of the God above him. 

A man of quick temper, which when loosed 
from its leash sometimes vented itself in a tirade 
of profanity, was one day pouring out the 
vials of his unrestrained wrath upon the hapless 



52 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



head of an employee. Suddenly he turned and saw 
his little girl looking at him in wide-eyed horror. 
Then covering her face with her hands, she 
turned and ran away from him. It was now his 
turn to be hurt with horror. How could he ever 
win back the respect of his idolized child? That 
was the last of profanity for him. 

Among our many incentives to be good, is not 
the desire to be esteemed by our children one 
of the strongest? Every man, indeed, likes to be 
thought well of by his neighbors, and it hurts 
anyone to think that others think ill of him. But 
nothing of this kind has such a sting in it as the 
feeling that those for whose good opinion we care 
most are the very ones who despise us most. To be 
worthy of the respect of his own children is one 
of the finest aspirations any man can have. When 
one has this to live for, he has something in 
his surroundings that will put stiffening into his 
purpose to live worthily. It is a noble desire in 
the heart of any man to live and labor so as to be 
approved in the sight of the God above him, a 
workman who has no need to be ashamed. Like- 
wise, it is a noble desire in the heart of any man 
to walk and talk, so as to be adored in the sight 
of the child below him, a father who has no need 
to be ashamed, 



UNTO THEM A CHILD IS BORN 



53 



In the emotions of a sound mind these two 
relationships work together to produce Christian 
character. It is really and deeply true that the 
more one is interested in a little child, the more 
he is concerned to know God and do his will. 
Conversely, it is really and deeply true that the 
more one is interested in God, the more he is 
concerned to have fellowship with child life. 
What comprehending appreciation of God and 
what depth of delight in child life lay back of the 
Master's protective saying, "Suffer the little 
children to come unto me; forbid them not: 
for to such belongeth the kingdom of God." 
The farther one gets into the Kingdom of God, 
the better he must know and the more he must 
delight in God. The more real anyone's fellow- 
ship with child life is, the more congenial to him 
are thoughts of the Kingdom. Concern for what 
is best for one's child moves hand in hand with 
all that whereby parental spiritual life is enriched. 

It takes one with the experience of a Christian 
father or mother to appreciate the exceeding 
great significance of the Eighth Psalm. Only one 
who has learned through his own better acquaint- 
ance with the highest by means of the influence 
of precious child companionship can get the fine 
meaning of the psalmist when he sings: 



54 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



" 0 Jehovah, our Lord, 
How excellent is thy name in all the earth, 
Who hast set thy glory upon the heavens ! 
Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast 
thou established strength." 
44 Childhood, 'with no language but a cry,' is, 
if rightly regarded in its source, its budding pos- 
sibilities, its dependence, its growth, a more 
potent witness to a more wondrous name than 
all the stars." 



HOW MANY CHILDREN 55 



CHAPTER V 
HOW MANY CHILDREN? 

IT is much easier to name the minimum than it 
is to fix the maximum. How many children 
there ought to be in a home, even whether or not 
there should be any children in the home, is a 
question upon which no man or woman outside 
of the home, unless it be the family physician, 
has a right to assert judgment. It is primarily 
a question between the home builders and God. 

There are certain general principles which a 
man and a woman bringing their lives into union 
for the purpose of making a home are bound to 
regard, in determining for themselves what the 
will of God for them is in the matter of having 
children. It ought to be well understood by us 
all that except the Lord build the home, "they 
labor in vain that build it." No home enduring 
in its pleasures, satisfying in its possessions, was 
ever yet built in defiance of the will of God. To 
their own Master every man and woman must 
stand or fall. And while outsiders have no 
right to sit in judgment upon them, it is for them 
to judge themselves, to seek and find God in all 
the ways of their home life. The house that is 



56 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



built upon the sand of mere sentiment, or the 
quicksand of mere infatuation, is bound to fall. 
But, like the house built upon a rock, the home 
that is built upon the principle of hearing and do- 
ing the sayings of Jesus Christ cannot fall; 
though the rains descend and the floods come, 
and though the winds of whatever adversity blow 
and beat upon that home, it will not fall. 

Foremost among the principles in determining 
what this duty is must be reckoned God's first 
command to the first husband and wife. They 
were told by their Maker to be fruitful and mul- 
tiply. By so doing they would replenish and 
subdue the earth. There is close kinship be- 
tween the first commandment to parents and the 
first commandment to children. In obedience 
thereto lies possession, with enjoyment, of the 
earth. The first commandment with promise is 
to children, namely this, that they should honor 
their father and mother. The promise attached 
to obedience is well-being, with long life, on the 
earth. Antecedent to that, involving essen- 
tially the same assurance, was the command to 
become parents. By being fruitful and multi- 
plying their kind upon the earth, they would be 
able to subdue it, dominate it, use it for their own 
well-being. And from the days of Adam and 



HOW MANY CHILDREN 57 



Eve to the day of the latest pioneers that 
assurance has been demonstrated. A few hardy 
settlers locate in the wilderness. On every hand 
is danger. Their homes are all but bare of com- 
forts. Slowly, surely, their numbers increase, 
and by and by the very wilderness is brought un- 
der human control, and made productive in hu- 
man comfort. As it was in the beginning, it is 
now, and ever shall be, so long as man dwells up- 
on the earth. God said then and means now 
that husband and wife shall be fruitful and mul- 
tiply their kind upon the earth. 

The duty is not diminished, but rather em- 
phasized by the advance of civilization. The 
change from sparse rural settlements to con- 
gested city populations does but increase the 
need that they who look to God for guidance 
should be fruitful and multiply their kind. The 
other kind keeps multiplying. If the earth is to 
be kept in subjection and ruled for the good of 
humanity, it must be accomplished by the lead- 
ership and Christian dominance of those who 
fear God and keep his commandments. If the 
birth rate in good homes decreases while the 
birth rate in evil homes increases, the result can 
only be a return to wilderness standards. The 
lsat state will be worse than the first for in this 



58 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



new reign of animal selfishness and cruelty the 
forces of evil will have the advantage of all the 
tools of modern invention. The birth rate 
among the unworthy has little prospect of de- 
crease. Much can be done by educating and 
Christianizing their offspring, but from motives 
utterly selfish they will multiply and replenish 
the earth with their kind. As in the beginning 
it was necessary for husband and wife to be 
fruitful and multiply and reproduce their kind, 
in self-defense against the dangers imperiling 
them on every side, so likewise in the multiplied 
moral dangers of modern life, the hope of pre- 
serving the earth and the good thereof for the 
benefit of mankind lies in its replenishment with 
children of men who are also children of God. 

There are indeed conditions that make the 
rearing of a large family difficult. In the olden 
days, children very soon became a financial as- 
set. With grandmothers and aunts always 
available, there was no need of a trained nurse, 
and almost as soon as the little ones could walk 
there were things that they could do to release 
the energies of older members of the family for 
other work. The addition of a child meant a 
new unit of power in the forces of the family. It 
is quite otherwise now. The money cost of hav- 



HOW MANY CHILDREN 59 



ing a baby in the house in these days, to people 
without large income, is simply staggering. And 
as the children grow, instead of adding to the in- 
come-producing power of the family, as in former 
times, they become an increasing tax upon that 
income. Furthermore, the educational require- 
ments, in order to an equal chance in the com- 
petitions of the modern struggle for existence and 
fortune, involve home saving and sacrifice 
through many years that children may have the 
proper start in life. It is not, therefore, a sub- 
ject for an offhand judgment as to how many 
children a modern home, modest in its circum- 
stances, ought to have. 

Nevertheless, for all the difficulties, there are 
innumerable homes, with children enough to be 
described as large families, that in this our day 
are obtaining a good report for themselves. 
They pay their bills. They get along. They 
acquire polish by friction. They suffer humili- 
ation, in comparison with the less pinched. 
They keep growing. They have compensating 
joys, possible only in a home alive with a lot of 
children. Granted, then, that it is one of life's 
biggest adventures to take the risk of bringing a 
large family of children into this modern world, 
it is nevertheless true that when the books of 



60 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



life's deepest satisfactions are posted, the balance 
is to the good of the large family. Moreover, 
to them especially are the promises of God. 
"Have faith in God." 

Both during courtship and after marriage three 
is an undesirable number. It is true, as in a 
former chapter we have already reminded our- 
selves, that three in a home are better than two. 
But three never yet made the best stopping place. 
Where there are three, there ought to be at least 
four. For many reasons that is true. It is easier to 
rear two children together than one alone. Two 
or more children help to raise each other. Paren- 
tal life is broadened by having to deal with the 
unexpected in children of different dispositions. 
The training of a child is at the same time the 
spiritual education of the father and mother. 
One must not forget or seem to cast a slur on the 
truly noble Christian character found in both 
husband and wife in many a childless home. It 
is their double misfortune not to have children. 
It may be that some husbands and wives never 
want children, feel more than satisfied to be with- 
out them. But that may be doubted. Part of 
the time they may feel that way. It is hardly 
possible to feel that way always. The simple 
reason is that God made them so they would not 



HOW MANY CHILDREN 61 



feel that way all of the time. The little girl who 
loves and hugs her doll can hardly grow into nor- 
mal womanhood without having arms that some- 
times ache for the feel of a child. It is easy to 
believe that every woman is born into the world 
with the heart of a mother throbbing in her 
bosom. 

To live without children may be selfish. It 
may be self-denial. But it is always loss. The 
loss is of different kinds. One of the kinds is 
the loss of a peculiar type of pleasure, the pleas- 
ure of playing with children. There are some 
chambers in the hearts of men and women the 
key of which God places only in little hands. 
Except these unlock them, they remain closed 
to the end of life. 

Another loss is that of the pride and joy that 
come with the character and service attainments 
of a son or daughter. 4 4 Greater joy have I none 
than this, to hear of my children walking in the 
truth." Compared with such exultations, what 
is the pitiful negative satisfaction in being free 
from the care and responsibility of having and 
rearing children ! 

Once again, to have no share in the task of 
training children in the nurture and admonition 
of the Lord is to be without one of the best dis- 



62 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



ciplines men and women can have for their own 
souls. Doubtless some reader mentally ob- 
served, while perusing the sentence about the 
pride and joy of parents in the good work of sons 
and daughters, that there is an offsetting pain, 
which sometimes intensifies to anguish, in the 
sin and shame of profligate children. All that is 
very true. It is almost a universal belief that in 
every family there must be a black sheep, which 
is not true at all. But sometimes boys, and 
alas! girls, also, do go astray. Many a broken- 
hearted parent has known the tragic meaning of 
the words, 

• ' How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is 
To have a thankless child." 
Nevertheless, even at the worst, it is better to 
have loved and lost such a child than never to 
have had that child to love at all. 

In the very agonies over a wayward child, the 
parent who walks with God, and loves with God 
and like the Son of God goes to seek and save the 
lost, sees of the travail of his soul and is satisfied. 
Reckoning all his suffering and all his gain in 
godliness, he is richer for all eternity because of 
that experience. And then it may be, the chances 
are that it will be, that, scanning the distant 
hilltop over which the road from the far country 



HOW MANY CHILDREN 63 



winds, he will see, while yet he is a great way off, 
the lost lad coming to his father's house again. 
Then there will be such joy of life, such merry- 
making, as is never known save in a human 
father's heart tuned to the music in the heart of 
our heavenly Father. Looking at it from any 
point of view, a home without lads and lassies is 
a home with lots of losses. But let it be remem- 
bered, and remembered tenderly, not harshly, 
that to some wives it is not given either to bear 
or mother children. 

The training of the child, just as really as the 
discipline of parents, makes clear requirement for 
at least two children in the home. It is asking 
more than is fair of any boy or girl to withstand 
and triumph over the temptations to selfishness 
that so easily beset the path of an only child. 
Any child, though born one of a dozen, will have 
all sorts of temptations to selfishness, and we do 
well to remember that sometimes an only child 
is better reared than some in large families. 
When that happens, it is greatly to the credit of 
the parents. The point is that the path to un- 
selfishness is rough enough at best, and ought not 
to be made harder for any little one by lack of an- 
other child with whom the blessings of home 
must be shared. Also, it must be remembered 



64 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



that a child craves and has the right to other 
child companionship. 

It happens, not infrequently, that for good and 
sufficient reasons a woman may not become a 
mother a second time, just as now and again a 
good wife that is of the Lord cannot bear chil- 
dren at all. But over against that fact is a cor- 
responding fact, so fitted to it as to suggest that 
God meant them to be mated. Many children 
are born into the world to lose their mothers. 
Sometimes a babe is deserted. Sometimes the 
mother dies in giving her child life. Sometimes 
terrible misfortune overtakes parents so that 
they are unable to provide for and rear their chil- 
dren. As there are many childless homes, so 
there are many homeless children. Is it assum- 
ing too much to say that God meant them for 
each other? In many a home where husband 
and wife have been perfectly happy in each other 
and both longing for children, find that none 
will be born to them, they decide to get chil- 
dren in the way that God gets him children 
among men, that is, by adoption. It is rare to 
find such adoption a disappointment. Some- 
times there is indeed disappointment. But so 
also many times there is disappointment in the 
way children turn out who were born in the home. 



HOW MANY CHILDREN 65 



The risk is absolutely no greater in adopting a 
child than in having children by birth in the 
home. In either case the hope of parents is in the 
promise of a covenant-keeping God. Whether it 
be for a home where there are no children at all, 
or for a home having one child or more and 
wanting another, there are desolate little hearts 
in the world, needing, oh, so sorely needing, the 
hearts and the home of a mother and father. 

It is a blessed fact that a relation by arrange- 
ment can be as tender and full of affection as a re- 
lation by blood. It is profoundly true that 
blood will tell, but the blood that tells most is the 
redeeming blood of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus 
Christ. He himself said that his true kin, mother, 
brothers, and sisters, are those who do the will of 
his Father in heaven. And it is one of the blessed 
laws of God, wrought into our very natures, that 
people who live together, cultivating the same 
ideals, striving together to know and do the will 
of God become possessed by an all-controlling, 
all-satisfying love for each other. Under the work- 
ing of that law of our natures adopted children 
become unspeakably precious to their parents by 
adoption. 

It is in accordance with the same law in our 
natures that God gives the hearts of children to 



66 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



those who become their second mothers by mar- 
riage. All honor to the good stepmother! It is 
sometimes the fashion to say harsh things about 
her. No doubt there have been unworthy step- 
mothers, just as there have been unworthy 
natural mothers. The woman who goes into 
a home to become mother to the children of 
her predecessor faces big responsibilities and op- 
portunities. She may, and for the most part 
does, bring into such home a molding influence of 
love. From the first, the mother heart with 
which she was born goes out to these motherless 
children, and she becomes in very truth a love 
mother to them. And, though oftentimes it 
takes great tact and patience to love down ini- 
tial prejudice, in the end she has her reward in 
the very great love in the hearts of the children 
for her, and she herself comes to know the deep- 
est joys of motherhood, though she never held 
her own babe to her bosom. 



CHASTENED BY CHILDREN 67 



CHAPTER VI 
CHASTENED BY CHILDREN 

THE moment a home has a child added to it, 
discipline begins. It begins first with the par- 
ents. They have matriculated in a new school, 
about which as yet they know little. Blessed are 
they if they bring to their new responsibilities the 
memories of a happy childhood of their own. 
What they learned from their fathers and 
mothers when they were themselves little chil- 
dren will be of unspeakable advantage in getting 
rightly started in the blessed task of rearing 
their own children. But as yet they know 
nothing as they ought to know it. The deepest 
things that a father and mother must know in 
order that they shall be a good father and mother 
must be learned by experience, and learned little 
by little. In order to become the kind of parents 
God meant them to be, the kind of parents God 
meant their children to have, they must, day 
by day, even night by night, in the care and con- 
trol of these little ones, be steadily becoming finer 
souls. 

And it is bound to work out that way. There 
is no polishing process equal to the rubbing down 



68 



THE HOME GOD MEANT 



by baby hands. That is one of the reasons why 
the female of the species is so much finer than 
the male. She has more contact with the child. 
Maternal work is never done, mother concern 
never relaxed. A young man, having in his 
voice just a little accent of pride over being now 
able to support himself, said to his mother, "It 
must be a great relief to you, mother, to have 
your children settled in life, and not to have any 
more anxiety for them." "Oh, you dear boy," 
she laughed, "you do not know anything about 
it." And then she added with wistful earnest- 
ness, 44 A mother's anxiety goes on as long as she 
and her children live." The saying about being 
tied to mother's apron strings is commonly 
quoted as if those apron strings held the child. 
The willful child may snip them and go far away 
from home. But the mother heart never knows 
that they are cut. They hold her to her child, 
however far he may go. For her apron strings 
are divinely elastic, and though stretched to the 
ends of the earth they w ill not break. If through- 
out all time and in all the world, the dearest 
name known to men, the name most held in 
honor among the brave and the strong, is 
"mother," there is a reason for it. She deserves 
it. She is crowned queen of the home because 



CHASTENED BY CHILDREN 69 



she is queenly. She became queenly by being 
steadfastly a good mother. The painful process 
of being a good mother was to her at the same 
time a refining process of making her a sweet 
soul. 

Responsibility is always arresting, and if ac- 
cepted and undertaken, is purifying and ennob- 
ling. A certain young man who had lived a 
happy-go-lucky life, wholly indifferent about 
money except as his pleasures required it, earning 
a good salary and for the most part living beyond 
it, came to the end of that road of gay frivolity 
by falling in love with a good woman. In due 
time they were married. What sobered him and 
changed his whole attitude toward life was the 
thought that he must now take care of two. 
The idea of his being responsible for the well- 
being and comfort of another life stung him into 
a self-restraint that had never even occurred to 
him before. He spoke of it to his father some- 
what on this wise: " Father, do you know when 
it came home to me that the girl who promised 
to marry me was trusting me to take care of her, 
giving up her own home, leaving its shelter and 
forsaking her parents and giving up their care for 
her in order to live with me, it almost made me 
afraid. I began to feel what a big thing I was 



70 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



undertaking. And, as had not before even 
entered my mind, I felt the imperative impor- 
tance of self-control in my indulgences, of earn- 
ing money and saving it." 

Also, there are other kinds of responsibility 
that sober and sanctify life. A very interesting 
and significant chapter in the spiritual auto- 
biography of an earnest mother was given to her 
pastor: "When I was a young girl, there was a 
revival in our village. It came to me that I ought 
to become a Christian and join the Church, both 
on my own account and in order to influence 
my brother to do the same. He was inclined to 
be wild, and I thought that he especially needed 
the restraints and spiritual quickening of Church 
membership. Both of us did join, and it worked 
out as I had hoped it would. I was, I think, a 
real Christian. I trusted and loved Jesus Christ. 
I was faithful in my church duties. I read my 
Bible and maintained habits of prayer. My life 
was counted consistent. By and by, I married. 
God was good to me and gave me children. As 
they were growing, and as the feeling of responsi- 
bility for them grew on me, I became very much 
dissatisfied with my Christian experience, es- 
pecially with my prayer life. I felt that I must 
have God in a way and in a measure that up to 



CHASTENED BY CHILDREN 71 



that time I had not had him. And so it was 
that my mother responsibility drove me to a 
greater directness and simplicity and earnest- 
ness in my prayer life." What parent has not 
found it so? 

Farther down the road the need deepens. Con- 
sider such a home as this. Healthy, robust, 
happy young parents; family life beautiful and 
joyous, innocence and sweetness abound. One 
day a dear child is caught telling a he. With a 
great heartache, those young parents talk it 
over after the children are in bed. With their 
eyes thus rudely opened, they see not only 
this but other things, straws showing how the 
wind blows through little lives, and they feel 
how easy it would be for little feet to go astray. 
They are face to face with the certainty that 
children precious and pure as theirs need only 
to be neglected to get away from goodness and 
God. And then they begin to watch and pray 
with new earnestness. They feel their own in- 
sufficiency for this great task of rightly rearing 
children. But out of this awakening to character 
dangers ahead of their children comes, not des- 
pair, but hope, hope in God. There is a larger 
place in their hearts for God now. They will 
be better souls and therefore better parents, 



72 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



These older children of God, through responsi- 
bility for their own children, are learning that 
it is not in their own strength but in God that 
their confidence lies. And after that lesson has 
been learned, who would surrender its gain for 
twice its cost? With all its fear and pain, there 
is nothing sweeter than this hovering in the 
companionship of God over the moral and 
spiritual growth of his children and ours. Since 
the outcome of heaviness of heart is a groping 
after God, and since the outcome of discovered 
weakness is a taking hold in restful hope upon 
the everlasting arms, there can be nothing that 
so purifies and satisfies the soul of a saint as duty 
wherein responsibility presses to the point of 
pain. 

The chastening or refining of the spirit of man 
comes by a double process. One side of it is a 
process of chiseling, of cutting off roughness and 
coarseness. The other side of it is a polishing, 
constructive process, a bringing out of the fine 
grain of character. 

God uses a little child to lead Christian parents 
through both of these processes. The mayor of 
an Ohio town gave a capital illustration of the 
first of these processes. It was at a meeting for 
the important patriotic task of cultivating the 



CHASTENED BY CHILDREN 73 



sentiment for law enforcement, a duty which the 
prohibition amendment is bound to keep urgent 
for years to come. Now this mayor had been a 
drinking man, what he himself described as a 
heavy drinker. But he was always opposed to 
the saloon, having other ways of getting his own 
liquor. But the time came when besides being 
against the saloon he became also a total ab- 
stainer. A little child led him to chisel the 
habit of strong drink out of his life. One day 
he was in the garden among the flowers when 
his little girl came running out to him, exclaim- 
ing in wonder and terror: " Oh, papa, come and 
see. Right in front of our house is a drunk man." 
It was as if he had been stabbed. Suppose he 
had been that drunken man? That might very 
easily have occurred. From that day he became 
a total abstainer. So far did he advance to be 
fine. 

Because they do not wish to set a bad example 
to their children, good and honest fathers and 
mothers are always putting away habits which, 
but for the children, they would not have con- 
sidered giving up. Think of a man who was 
fifty years old and beyond. All his life he had 
been a smoker. Just before his marriage it was 
his intention to please his wife by giving up 



74 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



what he himself called the pernicious weed. But 
that good intention went to the place where a 
great many good intentions go, and he kept on 
keeping company with the pernicious weed after 
the wedding. It was always a rarely happy 
home in spite of tobacco smoke. One day a 
stranger came to the village, announcing that 
he would lecture on "Phrenology." Any other 
subject would have done as well, for he talked 
almost everything but phrenology. And he said 
some good things. Among these was a word to 
the effect that a man was a born fool who would 
try to get his boys to give up a habit while 
he set the example of indulging in that habit. 
The man who is at the heart of this paragraph, 
and whose cherished memory is in the heart of 
its writer, was standing at the open window of 
the crowded town hall, both smoking and 
listening, as it were, bagging two treats with 
one smoke. Faster than the fire consumed his 
cigar the speaker's sentence burned its way into 
his heart and conscience. That was his last 
smoke, though he lived for thirty years after- 
wards. He said, "If my boys began by my 
example, they can quit by it." Years later, one 
of his sons, who had long since given up the 
habit, expressed his regret that when the habit 



CHASTENED BY CHILDREN 75 



had become so much a part of his life, and had 
meant so much in comfort for him, it had been 
necessary to give it up for the sake of its influence 
on his boys. Swift and decisive was his answer, 
" It was the best thing that ever happened to me." 
Yes, he had cut away the habit for the sake of 
his sons, but the exscinded excrescence had left 
him a finer soul. 

This is gospel truth, that while having chil- 
dren brings a perpetual challenge to sacrifice 
personal indulgences, that whole process of self- 
sacrifice is at the same time a process in personal 
culture, the noble culture of the spiritual life. 
It is a growth in diminishing selfishness. Every 
day brings this challenge, and it comes in a 
thousand forms. Not infrequently, the sacrifice 
is hard to make. But always there is this in- 
centive, "for the sake of the children," and 
always there is this divinely intended good, that 
the self-sacrificing parent is casting off some- 
thing that needed to be cast off for the beauty of 
his character. 

All that, however, is but part of the process, 
and negative at that. Parenthood is meant to 
bring out the best that there is in the grain of 
character. For one thing, faithfulness, to pa- 
rental responsibility sets up in the home the ideal 



76 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



of service. How great that service is, how mani- 
fold, how varied, how costly, no sons or daughters 
know until in their turn they become parents. 
And while they are paying the price of their 
own parenthood, they learn the nature and the 
extent of the investment which their parents had 
put into their lives. But this they knew and 
saw while they were growing up in the home of 
their parents, that in their Christian father and 
mother was a kind of saintliness, a something 
that in the coming years they would idealize and 
think of as the beauty of the Lord upon them, 
imputing to them a purer excellence of char- 
acter than they really possessed. The excellence 
was there, but mixed in with other things that 
were not excellent. 

Let no husband resent or grudge his wife's 
praise of her father. Let no wife resent or 
grudge her husband's praise of his mother. No 
odious comparison is intended. It is only that 
distance lends enchantment to the view of the 
old home. And the reason memory so idealizes 
the character of departed fathers and mothers 
is that in the remembered picture are scenes of 
a gracious and tender service. So many things 
father and mother did to make life pleasant for 
the children. The good things to eat, the toys 



CHASTENED BY CHILDREN 77 



to play with, the visits that were planned, the 
parties given, the comforting, healing words in 
time of trouble, the unmurmuring doing without 
for themselves that something might be pro- 
vided for the advantage of the children — all 
these and countless other things like them stay 
in the memory, while things less lovely grow dim 
and disappear. But they were in the parental 
character, there in the making, there along with 
contrary qualities that would not last, or they 
would not be so lovingly remembered, so vividly 
felt by grateful children. And so it is one of the 
noblest ideals of the home life to be making 
beautiful memories for the children. And do 
not forget that at the same time and by the same 
process it is making beauty, enduring beauty, in 
the character of the parents. 

At first childish minds will only wonder, not 
knowing what it means, to see father and mother 
getting down on their knees. The little child 
will be noisy and interrupt. Even when older, 
the child may complain and resent family 
prayers. Where there are several children, it is 
more than likely that at times there will be 
giggling and studied attempts on the part of one 
child to make another laugh when most serious- 
ness is expected. Even worse, father may get 



78 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



angry and say things in a temper which are wholly 
unbecoming in a man leading family worship. 
Nevertheless, in memory's treasured art gallery, 
that is a beautiful picture, a cherished picture, 
a picture before which one often likes to linger 
and from which comes inspiration to be more the 
kind of person God wants. And for all the im- 
patience that sometimes breaks out in a rigid 
regime of religious forms in the home, the 
persistence of parents in keeping up those forms 
is doing several things. It is making a home in 
which God is definitely honored. It is giving 
bias toward God's way for a human life. It is 
creating an influence that to the end of life will 
play on the children of that home. It is laying 
the foundation for a respect for the memory of 
parents after they are dead and gone. And it 
is bringing out lines of beauty in character that 
children will remember when they have forgotten 
other things. 

There will be occasion in a later connection to 
say something more about religion in the home. 
It is sufficient here to dwell upon its value to the 
character-refining procees in the experience of 
the parents. Such things as asking the blessing 
at the table, having family worship, taking time 
to teach children what duty is, what we are to 



CHASTENED BY CHILDREN 79 



believe about God, how Jesus is our Saviour, and 
the like, will mean doing difficult things, will 
mean giving up often what we very much want 
to do, will mean, possibly, embarrassment and 
fear. But we are all able to do all of these things. 
God will help us. Our children need them. And 
we get a double reward! By them we confer 
benefit on our children, and by them we bring 
out and develop latent and otherwise dormant 
beauty and strength of character. The glory of 
being parents such as God meant is bought with 
a very great price. But it is worth the price. 



80 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



CHAPTER VII 
HOME HAPPINESS 

FROM time immemorial it has been said, 
"There's no place like home." All men be- 
lieve it. It was meant that way. They are 
terribly to blame who make of home such a place 
that husband or wife or child should want to get 
away from it. Oh, to be sure, everyone needs a 
change now and then. But always the best part 
of any vacation is coming back home. Also, tem- 
peraments and moods must be reckoned with. 
To get angry and flounce out of the room and 
slam the door is not absolute proof of total de- 
pravity. Nor is it proof that notwithstanding 
such giving way to temper home is not still the 
best place on earth. Wanderlust likewise often 
drives a lad far from his home. But when the 
fever goes down and he comes to himself, he also 
longs for his father's house. It takes terrible 
things to kill the love for home. The simple 
truth is that God meant home to be the happiest 
place in the land of the living. 

In the warfare between the temptations that 
separate families and the forces that bind home 
folks together, the natural advantage is all on the 



HOME HAPPINESS 



81 



side of the union. In some strange way an at- 
tachment for the place of one's birth and child- 
hood grows with every inch of stature and with 
all the opening of the mind to an appreciation of 
life. The hills and the valleys, the trees and the 
rocks, the streams and the roadways, the play- 
grounds and the swimming holes and the paths 
in the woods, all suffuse and possess and never 
let go of the heart of a boy or a girl, though they 
live to be a hundred years old. This primitive 
and indestructible passion for the scenes of child- 
hood means simply that God has written deep in 
the constitution of human nature something that 
works and keeps working for the preservation of 
the home. God has given us a good foundation 
on which to build an enduring structure of home 
happiness. 

But there are many adversaries. Good as is 
this law in the constitution of human nature, it 
does not work automatically any more than does 
the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution 
of the United States. When a man and a wo- 
man start a home, dreaming of happiness, they 
need to know that they can have happiness, that 
God meant them to have happiness, and that to 
get happiness and hold fast to it, they will have 
to fight for it. 



82 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



Our pioneer fathers came to the wilderness and 
fought for their homes, fought wild beasts, fought 
savages, fought their own ignorance, and they 
won their fight. And somehow there's always a 
fight on. Perhaps it is the making of men to 
have to fight, to fight for their wives and for 
their children. Time was when virgin soil pro- 
duced plentifully, when fruit trees bore abun- 
dantly, yielding perfect fruit with little care. 
But the farmer whose forbears cleared the fields 
finds that he also must fight if he would win. 
His soil becomes infected with tiny enemies. 
His trees are infested with scale and other foes. 
In very truth the modern farmer has more and 
meaner enemies than had those who cleared the 
forests and braved frontier conditions. 

It is that way in the task of making the home 
fruitful in happiness. Old-fashioned home hard- 
ships, except among the very poor, are no longer 
known. Material conditions are vastly better. 
We have fewer discomforts, more conveniences. 
We have more palatable food. We 'are less lonely. 
Amusements are multiplied. But the very abun- 
dance and variety of good times make the 
fight for home happiness not less but more ur- 
gent. The percentage of wrecked homes seems 
to increase in the exact ratio of expansion and 



HOME HAPPINESS 



83 



diffusion of luxuries. It is not hard to see why. 
All these things tend to self-indulgence, to rest- 
lessness, to morbid desire for change, to diseased 
nerves, to disregard of moral values, to insatiable 
lust for pleasure. Vanity and envy reenforce 
the rebellion against home conditions. Other 
people have this and do that, why not we? 

The difference between the fight for home hap- 
piness to-day and the fight for home happiness 
no longer than fifty years ago is quite like the 
difference between an orchardist's fight for fruit 
to-day and his fight for fruit before the days of 
San Jose scale and coddling moth and coopera- 
tive pests. The task is not easier. It is harder. 
The enemies are not fewer. They are more. 
The need for fighting is not less. It is greater. 

But so also is the prize more worth while. We 
do not have poorer fruit to-day than the fathers 
had who had only the wilderness and the weather 
to fear. We have better. The old-time pro- 
duction was due to the advantage of a new coun- 
try. The present-time production is due to 
science. It means a higher human control. 
The former days were not better days. The 
quality of home happiness is not coarser now 
than then. It may be finer. The better equip- 
ment, the larger leisure, the wider correspond- 



84 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



ence with the best in life, offer more chance for 
joy in the higher ranges of experience than was 
possible under conditions where both body and 
mind were being perpetually exhausted in the 
struggle for existence. Where there was little 
leisure, where there was much hard work with 
constant weariness, where the need of struggle 
was forced upon all, only the coarsest enemies to 
home happiness had a chance to invade and de- 
stroy it. But with much leisure, and exuber- 
ance of animal spirits, and multiplied facilities 
for pleasure, the stage is set for domestic trage- 
dies in all seasons. 

What is needed is just higher human control. 
Fighting enemies of home happiness must be- 
come a science. It calls for study. It calls for 
purpose and plan. If there ever was a day when 
a happy home was a matter of luck, a piece of 
sheer good fortune in the mating of sweet dispo- 
sitions, it is gone. The fact of enemies must be 
recognized and faced. The way to meet them 
must be studied and grasped. Once let the 
mind be made up on that point, and the battle is 
largely won. The forces that may be enlisted 
in the fight for home happiness are greater than 
the enemies that would destroy it. 

"God is our refuge and strength." Our hope 



HOME HAPPINESS 



85 



is in God. Religion is the one adequate force 
to meet and conquer every enemy of the home, 
within or without. It is gladly agreed that one 
does often find a beautiful home life, beautiful in 
many ways, where there is no pretense to reli- 
gion. But even there, without confessing the 
source of them, the people in that home practice 
many of the principles of our religion. The 
teaching here is that always, and in these days in 
which it is more difficult to sustain home happi- 
ness than ever before, religion is the great re- 
quirement. It is that and that alone which 
gives the higher human control needed to meet 
and overcome the innumerable pests that now 
prey upon the vital forces of the home. 

Religion is needed for its own sake. It has 
been very well described as "the inspiration of 
God in the soul and the aspiration of the soul 
after God." Religion, at the heart of it, is just 
a man's walk with God. That walk is needed 
for the man's own sake and satisfaction. It is 
needed to regulate his relations with others, and 
it is that aspect of it with which we are here con- 
cerned. We often hear people say of things that 
they are much in earnest about that such things 
are "a matter of religion" with them. We hear 
them say, when they want to make it clear and 



86 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



emphatic that what they do is done with care and 
thoroughness, that they 44 do it religiously." 
That is the point. Do the things that make for 
home happiness religiously. Then they will be 
done effectively. 

Begin, for example, with the matter of games 
in the home. That is something to be looked 
after religiously. By that is meant much more 
than excluding from the home games that are in- 
imical to religion. Some games do stifle religion. 
A game of chance played for money, even though 
it be but a penny, or for any prize, stifles religion. 
The voluptuous dance, with the immodestly 
dressed body of a woman held close to the hot- 
blooded body of a man, is the enemy of religion. 
And every game that makes it harder for God to 
get in and stay in the human soul should be 
barred from the home. 

That, however, is a mere preliminary. God 
meant men to play, to play religiously. In the 
home that he would bless there ought to be a lot 
of games. And the parents must play, and keep 
up the habit of playing with the children. They 
must make the setting-apart time for that a mat- 
ter of religion. The appointment with the chil- 
dren must be as sacred as the appointment with 
a bank president. It is not enough to provide 



HOME HAPPINESS 



87 



games. Religion requires participation in the 
games. Many |a man lets his boy get away from 
him, lets barriers grow up between them, so that 
they have nothing in common and are constantly 
misunderstanding each other, the life between 
them being a perpetual rebellion on the one hand 
and on the other hand a perpetual scold, just be- 
cause he did not religiously hold himself to a pro- 
gram of play with the lad. 

Then there is the matter of confidences. Lit- 
tle folks impulsively look to their parents as their 
confidential friends. They have many ques- 
tions to ask. Some of them can't be answered. 
No matter. Talk with them about it. Do it 
religiously. They have their ambitions. They 
have had their experience in suffering wrong. 
They crave sympathy. Do not be so cold or in- 
different, and especially do not try to get funny. 
Take them seriously. No period in all the seven 
ages of our human life is more marked by the de- 
sire to be taken seriously than the age of child- 
hood and youth. It is within the phases of such 
confidences that parents and children become 
chums. 

Once more, and most fundamentally of all, 
cultivate and keep growing all the purer impul- 
ses of religion. Children are easily led to God, 



88 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



are glad of whatever brings God within their lives. 
It is the keeping the sense of God alive in the 
heart that more than any other one thing per- 
petuates the happiness of the home. No little 
thing that does that is unimportant. In the 
long run the sense of God in the heart makes more 
for peace and pleasure in the home than a natu- 
rally sunshiny and sweet disposition, though 
blessed is the home where both abound, as both 
may abound in the same heart. The relation 
between husband and wife and the relation be- 
tween parents and children and the relation of 
children to each other are purified and sweetened 
by the deepening sense of God in the heart. 

This is the point of view from which to see the 
values of religious activities in the home. Some 
people are religious about every thing but their 
religion. They will religiously perform a busi- 
ness duty, religiously keep an engagement, reli- 
giously pay a debt when payment was promised, 
but be quite haphazard and spasmodic and gen- 
erally irreligious about prayer and Bible-reading 
and religious conversation and the like. They 
carefully observe the amenities of social life, and 
give little heed to the graces of worship. These 
ought they to have done, and not to leave the 
other undone. The weightier matters of home 



HOME HAPPINESS 



89 



life and social life and all life that involves the art 
of living together concern themselves with wait- 
ing on God. Very plainly, therefore, and very 
earnestly, it is here urged as the chief means of 
promoting and keeping home happiness that 
everything that exalts religion ought to be zeal- 
ously practiced in the home. Specifically, the 
blessing ought to be asked at meals ; once a day 
at least, the whole family ought to read together 
from the Bible and kneel together in common 
prayer; both by example and complementary 
teaching the father and mother ought to train 
their children in daily habits of private Bible- 
reading and prayer ; by example if possible, cer- 
tainly by counsel, the children ought to be en- 
couraged to go to Sunday school; by example, 
and if necessary by authority, the children should 
be educated in habits of church attendance. 

And throughout the whole religious program 
of the home, there ought to be an atmosphere of 
good cheer. Sunday should be made the bright- 
est day of the week. The children should have 
reason to look forward to happy Sunday after- 
noons. Sunday school must supplement, never 
supplant, home training. When the children 
are young, this atmosphere of delight in the day 
may be created simply, as by having some play- 



90 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



things that are cherished and may be used only 
on Sunday, and by various treats of one kind and 
another. But always the pleasant experience 
may have at the heart of it a thought of God, the 
God who is good and kind and loving. As the 
children increase in stature and wisdom, there 
will emerge gradually under wise parental direc- 
tion a growing understanding and appreciation 
of religion, of living to please God. And it will 
not seem to come as a kill-joy, as the enemy of 
happy hearts, but as the surest source of purest 
and most abiding happiness. 



FAMILY FAITH 



91 



CHAPTER VIII 
FAMILY FAITH 

HOW good and how pleasant it is when the 
folks at home dwell together in unity of 
faith. No discord is so harsh as the discord of 
religious differences. That it as is ought to be. 
For it argues that no harmony is so sweet as the 
harmonies of religion. Religion is the most po- 
tent force in human life. If it makes for happi- 
ness it is mighty. If it makes for misery it is 
still mighty. 

Whoever would undertake to build a home on 
the basis of radical religious differences must 
reckon on many a hard hour of trial. In the in- 
fatuation of love's young dream the possibility of 
a quarrel or even any unpleasantness because of a 
conflict in religious conviction is laughed to 
scorn. But the sad, sad experience of many who 
were wildly happy throughout the romance of 
courtship bears pathetic witness to the hazards 
they face who join hands in wedlock in defiance 
of deep antagonisms in their faith. Here oppo- 
sites do not attract but rather repel with in- 
creasing bitterness. 
The field in which these differences may work 



92 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



harm is happily narrowing. Time was, and not 
so very long ago, when denominational prejudice 
even among Protestants was so sharp as to be a 
cause of irritation in homes where husband and 
wife had opposing sectarian bias. Denomina- 
tional pride often, and denominational bigotry 
always, stifles the spirit of Christ, without whose 
spirit people cannot live together as they ought 
to live. Once upon a time there was little social 
interchange among denominational groups, and 
marrying outside of one's own Church was 
uncommon. But such influences as the public 
schools broke jdown these social barriers more 
rapidly than sectarian prejudice abated, and 
in consequence people belonging to different 
churches married while both in some measure still 
felt the superiority of their respective denomi- 
nations. The result was that painful differences 
sometimes arose, and even grew so intense as 
now and again to force husband and wife hope- 
lessly apart. Another very unhappy develop- 
ment was the breaking out of arguments and dis- 
agreeable scenes abhorrent to the children and 
producing in them an undying prejudice against 
all religion. 

The multiplying occasions which in recent 
years have brought the denominations into closer 



FAMILY FAITH 



93 



fellowship and cooperation have quite largely 
destroyed the old denominational prejudices. 
They seldom spoil home life. Thank God for 
that. Among Protestants, for the most part, 
marrying in another denomination is hardly 
different from marrying in the denomination in 
which one has been reared. 

There remain at least two very serious obsta- 
cles to the kind of home God meant, for those 
who do not agree in religion. One of these is 
such a difference as exists between Protestant 
and Romanist. Nothing unkind of another 
person's religion will be said in these pages. Nor 
will anything be written reflecting on the home 
life of husbands and wives having such a differ- 
ence. All honor to those who in spite of radi- 
cal variance in religious conviction live in mutual 
tolerance and respect and unceasing love. After 
such alliance is made, it ought to be maintained 
and cherished, and by every friend respected, 
honored, and encouraged. 

Nevertheless, their task is not easy, and their 
difficulties are great. They cannot whole- 
heartedly go to the same church. They cannot 
aggressively together seek to advance the growth 
and service of either church. And the inabil- 
ity to do that is a spiritual handicap in their per- 



94 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



sonal experience, for one of the most important 
means of spiritual growth is earnest Christian ac- 
tivity through the fellowship of church life. 
The ordinary happening in such cases is that both 
retain a nominal connection with their respective 
churches, perhaps each in the heart more deter- 
minedly loyal to it, and accordingly in the heart 
also more determinedly hostile to the church of 
the life companion. How can two lives grow to- 
gether as God meant they should when each in- 
wardly antagonizes the deepest inward life of the 
other? 

Occasionally, one of the two, finding it impos- 
sible to adopt the religion of the other, seeks re- 
fuge in giving up all church relation. If it is 
impossible to go all the way to the viewpoint of 
the other, it may help a little to go half of the 
way. But if the hurt of this course is not so ob- 
vious at first, it is the more deadly in the end, for 
of all things needful to nourish and keep love 
growing, religion is the most vital. It may be 
argued that one can be religious without having 
any church connection. Granting the possi- 
bility of that, it does not often work out that 
way. People who are most anxious to be reli- 
gious feel most the need of Church fellowship. 
It is better that these two shall go in different di- 



FAMILY FAITH 



95 



rections, and go to two churches, than that 
either should go to none. 

Another notion for avoidixig the unpleasant 
consequences of a radical difference in religion is 
that there shall be no children. It is indeed true 
that the coming of children makes the home 
problem more complex. The Romanist safe- 
guards his end of the situation by requiring, first, 
that a priest shall perform the marriage ceremony 
and, secondly, that a pledge be given to rear the 
children, if any come, in the Roman Catholic 
Church. The first requirement, however exas- 
perating, may be suffered. But the second is in- 
tolerable to anyone of Protestant convictions. 
The pledge may be given, but, with the secret un- 
derstanding between the husband and wife, that 
there shall be no children. 

While the absence of children will save the 
home from some unpleasant experiences, the 
home that deliberately plans to shut its doors 
against children will sooner or later know the 
hard way of transgressing the law of God. It 
is better, far better, to have children and squarely 
face the complexities of their spiritual training 
than to deny the law of God for the sake of evad- 
ing those responsibilities. The difficulties of 
rearing children in a home where there is radical 



96 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



difference in religion are obvious to the common 
sense of all. They are so great that they cry 
aloud. And what do they cry? Well, they do 
not cry out against children. No voice of God 
ever cries out against children. But what do 
they cry? They cry out against impulsive mar- 
riage. They are like the sign at the railroad 
crossing, which warns: " Stop. Look. Listen." 
The multiplication of automobiles has appall- 
ingly increased the road-crossing tragedies. The 
fast living of modern society has just as appall- 
ingly increased the tragedies of impulsive mar- 
riage. 

It is likewise a mistake to overlook the happi- 
ness hazard of a Christian being unequally yoked 
together with an unbeliever. This character in- 
equality is met in different degrees. An ex- 
treme form of it is when a Christian girl is willing 
to leave a happy home to become the wife of a 
rake. She may think that her happiness de- 
pends upon it. She may think herself a heroine 
to take any risk for love. She may think that 
love for her will work the reform of a reprobate. 
She may think that martyrdom for love is glo- 
rious, that even though in the end she may suffer, 
anyhow for a little while she will be rapturously 
happy. She may even sacrifice herself to the 



FAMILY FAITH 



97 



feeling that it would be cruel to her lover not to 
stand by him and surrender all to him when 
everyone else is against him. How easy it is for 
the Devil to clothe himself with light and seem 
like a very angel when he whispers to a man or 
woman sick with supposed love! 

A young woman infatuated with a young man 
who had won the dark reputation of being a 
drunkard, answered all the warnings of her 
friends, with the final and peremptory close of 
the talk, by saying, 44 1 would rather be the wife 
of this man drunk than the wife of any other man 
sober." She had gone so far that there was no 
retreat. She was in the position of one with a 
stalled automobile on the crossing with the light- 
ning express at hand. The moment one begins 
to feel the awakening of special interest in an- 
other, the time has come to take stock of that 
other's character. If that character does not 
meet a standard test, in such case it is better to 
have loved and lost than to love any further. 

There are men and women of truly noble 
character who are not members of any church. 
Whether they are Christians or not is for them 
and Christ to decide. They are certainly not 
confessed Christians. It is on every account de- 
sirable that they should be. It does happen 



98 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



that such a one is led by a Christian companion 
to avow faith in Christ. Scripture encourage- 
ment is given to pray and work for such a result. 
It is here earnestly contended that the family 
should be a unit in church membership. When 
it is not so, the Church member part of the home 
has an unfair burden to carry. Loneliness is al- 
ways painful. Spiritual loneliness is especially 
so. A Christian husband or wife going alone to 
the Lord's table, with unutterable longing for the 
spiritual sympathy of the life companion, suffers 
as only God understands. Usually it is the hus- 
band, rarely the wife, who allows the other to suf- 
fer that loneliness. Is that fair? Is that ful- 
filling the spirit of the marriage vow? To think 
for the moment not of the highest motive, to be 
a confessed follower of Christ, but only of the 
vow to comfort, cherish, and support, how far 
short of that vow does one come who fails to sup- 
port wife or husband in the deepest and dearest 
devotion of the life? 

Then, if there are children in the family, con- 
sider how much harder it is to lead these to accept 
and confess Christ, if an honored father or mother 
is not a Church member. A lad who was urged 
by his pastor to receive Jesus as his Saviour and 
join the Church, replied with a quiver in his lips, 



FAMILY FAITH 



99 



that his father had died without being a Chris- 
tian, and he had no desire to go to heaven if his 
father were not there. It was explained to him 
that only God knew how it was with his dead 
father, and that it would be a fearful mistake for 
him to live as if he had no hope of meeting his 
father in heaven. Supposing now that that 
father had indeed made his peace with God, and 
did in very truth attain heaven through secret 
faith in Christ, who can measure the wrong he 
did to his boy by failing to leave him the legacy 
of remembered confession of faith in Christ? 
How much easier it would have been for the boy, 
loving his father as he did, to accept and confess 
Christ before men, if he had had the blessed en- 
couragement of his father's example! And how 
hard, how pitifully hard, the father made taking 
an open stand on the side of Christ for that boy, 
by having lived his own life outside the Church. 

There is another point here, grave because it 
pertains to such a large number of homes, and 
that is the irregularity in attendance, and some- 
times prolonged neglect, of Church services by 
one or more members of the family. Even more 
burdensome than not being a Church member at 
all is having a companion who is a nominal 
member and utterly without active interest in 



100 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



the church worship and work. In bygone days 
churches of the stricter sort disciplined for "the 
sin of occasional hearing." By that was meant 
occasional hearing of a preacher in another de- 
nomination. If discipline were enforced for the 
sin of occasional hearing in one's own church in 
these days, church officers would be kept busy 
dealing with careless members. 

It is not with the scandal of it, nor with the 
hurt of such neglect upon the individual Chris- 
tian life, that we are here dealing, but with the 
effect of it upon the family faith and life. In 
many matters there will be family differences of 
opinion. As touching most matters, that is a 
good thing. It sharpens wits. It develops the 
mind. It broadens one's thinking. But in re- 
spect to that aspect of religion which pertains to 
the public worship of God, and the faithful at- 
tendance upon that worship, a difference in fam- 
ily habits works spiritual harm. If the family 
attitude be that it does not make any particular 
difference, that it is all right for those to go who 
want to go to church, and equally all right for 
those who do not want to go to stay at home or do 
something else, there can be no strong religious 
life in that family. If it be so that some of the 
family very earnestly want to keep holy day and 



FAMILY FAITH 



101 



go every Sunday regularly to the house of God, 
and others in the family refuse to go except when 
they feel like it, the house is divided against it- 
self. The home cannot be what it ought to be, 
half faithful and half careless. 

One of two things must happen. Either, for 
the sake of peace, a heartache will be silently 
borne by those who want to honor God in his ap- 
pointed way, because of the disregard of that 
duty by the others, or there will be household 
wrangling over the question. Whichever of 
these two things happens, the home is getting a- 
way from what God meant it to be. There is 
only one way of peace and spiritual well-being in 
the home, and that is for the whole family to be 
unitedly faithful in going to the house of God. 
There are just three courses open to choice, and 
only one of them with worth in it to the family. 
Either the whole family by common consent may 
ignore God and attach no value to religion; or 
it may be divided, part choosing to serve God 
and keep his commandments and part choosing 
to do as they please ; or the whole family by com- 
mon consent can will to obey God and keep his 
commandments. The last alone makes for 
home as it ought to be, as God would have it be. 
And it is ordinarily better that both husband and 



102 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



wife and all the children should go to the same 
church. In most cases when two from differ- 
ent churches become one in marriage, the wife 
should go with her husband. Sometimes it is 
the other way. But when possible they should 
go together. 

The Church is the single social institution that 
makes for family unity. For the home, the 
Church is a centripetal force. All the other so- 
cial forces are centrifugal. Business is a neces- 
sity, but it necessarily divides the family while 
business is being pushed. In a city suburb it 
often happens that almost the only time a father 
and his younger children see each other is on 
Sundays and holidays. Schools and colleges 
are invaluable. We would never think of doing 
without them. But they divide the family. A 
young man, going to college at fifteen and be- 
ginning to engage in reflective philosophy, mused 
while the fire of homesickness was burning in his 
heart, "My home will never be the same to me 
again." And it never was. Vastly dearer, but 
never the same again. For he never went back 
home save as a visitor in his vacations. 

Social engagements are really most important. 
It is so easy to incase one's life in a shell. We 
must be sociable in self-defense. But social en- 



FAMILY FAITH 



103 



gagements of all kinds split up the family. 
When a young man and a young woman from 
different homes plan a social event for two, to see 
if by any chance they can strike a common chord, 
if they succeed, they make altogether the sweet- 
est music this world knows anything about. 
But while they are tuning up, they do not want 
— emphatically, they do not want — the family 
around! Courtship is not a family affair. 
Honestly and truly, there is only one social force 
that does engage to have the whole family 
around, and that is the Church of Jesus Christ. 
Blessed be the family pew ! There all may sing the 
same hymns, reverently together attend to the 
reading and exposition of God's Word, unitedly 
join in the common worship of prayer, and feel 
their deeper fellowship, both with each other and 
with kindred spirits engaged in the same worship. 
In home-building it is of the utmost importance 
that the whole family shall have and hold the 
faith of our fathers. 



104 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



CHAPTER IX 
WISE UNTO SALVATION 

FATHER, I would like to meet the session and 
join the Church." Although Laddie spoke 
somewhat shyly, he spoke positively. It was 
evident that his mind was made up. 

"Come and tell me about it, Laddie. It 
makes me very glad. Mother and I have been 
hoping and praying for such an hour as this. Let 
me help you make sure that you understand just 
what you want to do. How long have you been 
thinking about joining the Church? What led 
you to decide that you wanted to do it?" 

64 Oh, ever so long. But it was only after the 
last Communion that I told Jesus I would do it. 
For more than a year I have felt unhappy at 
Communion times, when I saw others taking the 
bread and the little cups, while I was passed by. 
It did not hurt me that I was passed by, except 
that I began to wonder if I was doing right not 
to do what the others were doing. At first I felt 
I was too young, for mother and you had always 
said to me that when I was older I could do it, 
too. Then I began to want to do it. And I 
kept feeling that Jesus wanted me to do it, and 



WISE UNTO SALVATION 105 



that I would like to do it to please him. But at 
the last Communion I felt about it as I had never 
felt before. And I was sure that now I am old 
enough. So I made up my mind that before the 
next Communion I would meet the session and 
be received into the Church." 

"Well, Laddie, I am a happy man this day. 
I think you are right. Perhaps I can explain to 
you some things that will help you to see how it 
happened that you felt about it the last Com- 
munion as you had never felt about it before. 
But, first, let me remind you that you are 
already a real member of the Church. You are 
not joining the Church next Sunday in the sense 
that you have never belonged to it, as if you 
were coming into it like a stranger, like a 
foreigner becomes a citizen of our country. While 
he is sworn in, you were born in, Although you 
have never come to the Lord's table, since you 
were a little child you have sat among those 
gathered about that table, and it was your 
right to do so. You are a birthright member of 
the Church. Do you see that?" 

"I am not quite sure, father. I know you 
have always taken me to church, and I have 
always felt about it something like I feel about 
our home. I feel in our house that it is my 



106 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



home. And I feel in our church that it is my 
church. I suppose it is because I grew up in it." 

" That explains your feelings. But it does not 
explain your right. It is this way. God has 
made exceeding great and precious promises to 
his people, and his promises to us grown-ups are 
made to us in such manner as to include our 
children. On our part, as parents, we promise 
God that we will teach our children to know and 
obey him. On his part, as our God, he promises 
us that all the good he gives to us shall be for 
our children as well as for ourselves. In other 
words, our children are as much his children as 
our own. Where we belong, they belong. Where 
we go, they go. You know that when mother 
and I are invited for a visit to grandfather's, you 
children are included, for you are their children 
as well as ours, and they would feel very un- 
happy if you did not come with us. Does that 
help you to see that you are and always have 
been a birthright member of the Church to which 
your parents belong?" 

"Yes, it does. And I suppose that is one 
reason why you have always taken us children 
to church, even to the Communion service when 
we had no part in that." 

"Exactly. We were trying to keep our prom- 



WISE UNTO SALVATION 107 



ise to bring you up to know and obey God. 
We wanted you to see the Communion service. 
We knew you would always have some thoughts 
about it, and be wondering what it meant, and 
as you grew older that you would be asking 
yourself why you did not take part in it, and 
by and by come to know, as you have now done, 
that you have a right to take part in it. When 
you were little, just as sister is now, you could 
not see any difference between the bread on the 
Communion table and the bread on our home 
table. You were not old enough to ' discern ' the 
Lord's body. Now you understand that this 
bread on the Communion table is not like com- 
mon food at all, that we do not eat it to satisfy 
our appetite for something to eat, but that we 
eat it as a sign of something else, according to 
the commandment Jesus gave for us. It repre- 
sents to us his body, which was broken for us. 
In eating of this Communion bread we say, by 
sign language, that Jesus died for us, that we 
trust in his atoning death for our reconciliation 
to God, that Jesus is our life. And when we 
take the cup, we say, by sign language, that the 
blood of Jesus was shed for us for the remission 
of our sins, and that his blood cleanses us from 
all unrighteousness. 



108 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



64 Now, let me suggest to you why you felt 
about joining the Church after the last com- 
munion as you had never felt about it before. 
Remember always, that, for you, joining the 
Church is becoming a communicant member. 
You were always a birthright member. One 
difference between that and a communicant 
member is that the latter takes the bread and 
the cup in the Communion, as one who is only a 
birthright member does not do. Another and 
very important difference is that a communicant 
member tries to do right and not to do wrong on 
his own responsibility. When he was little, he 
was always being told by his parents what he 
ought to do and what he ought not to do. They 
carried the responsibility for his conduct. They 
will always, because of their love for him, be 
giving him advice. But when he becomes a 
communicant member of the Church, because 
he has taken on himself vows to obey Christ, 
he does not wait to be told by his parents. He 
feels that Christ expects him to carry the respon- 
sibility himself. 

" You are now twelve years old. That was just 
the age Jesus was when he went up to Jerusa- 
lem with his parents. A Jewish boy of that 
age became a ' son of the law. ' That for him 



WISE UNTO SALVATION 109 



meant very much what becoming a communi- 
cant member of the Church means for you. It 
meant that being now a son of the law he kept 
the commandments on his own responsibility, 
and not merely because his parents told him 
that he must keep them. Another and very 
beautiful thing is that God has so made us that 
when one is about your age, thoughts about God 
become suddenly active. The religious impulse 
is normally awakened about this period of a 
boy's or girl's life. You know how your interest 
in games changes. When you were a baby you 
liked to play with a rattle. You would not like 
to be seen with a rattle now, would you? I see you 
smile; I thought not. But you do like to play 
ball. Well, at different periods in everyone's 
life new and different feelings are awakened. 

"That, in part, and only in part, is why at the 
last Communion you felt about joining the 
Church as you had never felt before. God made 
you so that it would happen that way. That 
awakening does not always come to people at 
just the age of twelve. For some it is not until 
they are a little older. For some it comes when 
they are younger. Quite often it comes to ten- 
year-old boys, more often to ten-year-old girls, 
for in this the girls are a little ahead of the boys. 



110 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



Once in a great while a child seven years old, or 
even younger, will have this awakening. But 
the twelfth year is a sort of standard age for the 
awakening to happen. Understand, then, and 
I am so glad that it is so, that when you promised 
Jesus after the last Communion that at the next 
Communion you would join the Church, you 
were obeying a law of God which he established 
in your nature. God is pleased with that. 

"But God has done more for us than to put 
a law in our natures according to which people 
at about your age become suddenly and deeply 
thoughtful about their relations to him. By his 
Spirit, God gives us a new nature. Below all 
our thoughts, below all our feelings, by his Holy 
Spirit, God works such a big change in us that 
what we once cared little for we now love dearly 
and eagerly want. 

"Some very striking names are given to this 
change. It is called a new birth, a being born 
from above, born of the Spirit, because having 
such a new nature, such a new disposition is so 
great a change as to be like being born again. 
Also, since it is accomplished by the Holy Spirit, 
it is called being born of the Spirit. And because 
the new impulses resulting from this change are 
good impulses and not bad impulses, impulses 



WISE UNTO SALVATION 



111 



from above and not impulses from below, this 
new birth is called being born from above. Here 
you come to the deepest reason for your feeling 
about joining the Church after last Communion 
as you had never felt before. That new feeling 
about it was from the Holy Spirit. When you 
promised Jesus that you would confess your 
faith in him at the next Communion, you were 
obeying the impulse breathed within you by 
the Holy Spirit. 

"Of course you did not feel the Holy Spirit in 
your heart. It is not his way to speak of himself. 
He hides himself behind our thoughts and our 
feelings. He pushes Jesus forward into our 
thoughts and feelings, so that we think of him 
as we never thought of him before, and want 
to please him as we never felt we wanted to 
please him before. You do not need to bother 
your head about big words or deep mysteries. 
But you ought to know that your definite de- 
cision to accept Jesus as your Saviour and 
Master, and to confess him before men at the 
next Communion is due, in its full explanation, 
to the work of the Holy Spirit in your heart, and 
is evidence that you have been ' born anew, ' ' born 
from above,' for 6 no man can say, Jesus is Lord, 
but in the Holy Spirit. 



112 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



" Thank you, father. I think I begin to under- 
stand a little better why Jesus said so much 
about how he would send the Holy Spirit to 
help us. Perhaps I ought not to feel that way, 
but I am a little afraid to meet the session. Please 
tell me what kind of questions they will ask me." 

"I was going to do that, for it is very impor- 
tant that you should understand just what you 
are doing when you join the Church. The 
session will help you to understand that. You 
need not be afraid of any of these good elders. 
They have all been boys, and they have a great 
interest in young people coming into the Church. 
They will not ask you any questions to puzzle 
you or embarrass you or make you afraid. 
Rather, they will ask questions of a kind to help 
you to show your faith in Christ. There will be 
others joining the Church with you. One or two 
will be much older. There will be one boy who 
has had no Christian home training, no help 
toward Christ from his home. He is a member 
of one of our Sunday-school classes. And he will 
be most welcome. 4 Whosoever will may come.' 
The promises to Christian parents for their 
children do not shut out from the Kingdom 
the children of those who are not Christians. Such 
children are discouraged by the neglect of their 



WISE UNTO SALVATION 113 



parents, but they are encouraged in the house of 
God. The session will try to help each of you 
to see that every one of you is saved by faith in 
Jesus only. Your advantage is, not that you 
are better than the boys and girls from homes of 
parents who are not Christians, but that in a 
Christian home you have had a better chance to 
know about and love Jesus. Your salvation 
rests exactly upon the same ground as that of 
anyone else who is saved. 

"When you meet the session, probably the 
pastor will ask the questions. It may help to 
prepare you, if I ask you such questions as were 
asked me when I joined the Church, at about your 
age. You may answer as you will expect to an- 
swer in the session meeting. It is understood 
that in your answers you are saying what you 
honestly and sincerely believe. 

"Laddie, who is Jesus Christ?" 

"Jesus Christ is God's Son and our Saviour." 

"Do you take him to be your own Saviour?" 

"I do." 

"Why do you call him Saviour?" 
" Because it is he who saves me from my sins." 
"How does he save sinners?" 
"By his death on the cross, and by his life in 
our hearts." 



114 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



"How do you know that by his death and life 
you are saved?" 

"Because the Bible tells me so." 

"Do you accept the Bible as God's Word and 
your rule of life?" 

"I do." 

"What is the great Bible salvation verse?" 
"John 3:16." 

"How do we receive Jesus as our Saviour? " 

"By believing and repenting." 

"What do you understand by believing?" 

"Trusting and obeying." 

"And repenting?" 

"Turning away from every known sin, and 
purposing not to do it again." 
"Suppose we do sin again?" 
" God will forgive us." 
"How do you know?" 

"The Bible says so. 'If we confess our sins, 
he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our 
sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteous- 
ness."' 

"Do you believe that as truly as you would 
believe a promise of your earthly father?" 

"I will trust it in the same way." 

"Why does not being much forgiven lead to 
much sinning?" 



WISE UNTO SALVATION 115 



" 1 suppose being much forgiven leads to much 
loving. I know that when my father and mother 
forgive me, it breaks me all up and makes me 
want to try all the harder not to disobey them. 
I think that it must be the same way in getting 
forgiveness from our heavenly Father." 

"Can being good and doing good save a 
sinner?" 

"Not according to the Bible. Its teaching is 
the other way around, that being saved by faith 
in Jesus Christ leads to being good and doing 
good." 

"Why do you want to join the Church?" 

" Because I think Jesus wishes it and has made 
me wish it. I want to honor him and show my 
love for him. I think this is one of his appointed 
ways of doing it." 

"My dear boy, it pleases me more than I can 
tell you, to have you sit with us at the Lord's 
table and join us in this blessed memorial service. 
I am very happy that in your answers you show 
that you have given good attention to what your 
mother and I have tried to teach you. My 
heart is full of such joy and satisfaction as I 
think Paul must have been thinking of when 
he wrote to Timothy 'that from a babe thou 
hast known the sacred writings which are able to 



116 



THE HOME GOD MEANT 



make thee wise unto salvation through faith 
which is in Christ Jesus.' 

"Never forget that the Bible is the source of 
our knowledge of Jesus as our Saviour, the ground 
of our confidence that we are saved through faith 
in his name. Do not depend upon your feelings, 
and do not be swerved from your faith by the 
wisdom of men. Take the sayings in the Bible 
for God's truth as to the way of our salvation, 
and keep leaning on them. Believe them just as 
you would believe the word of your mother. ' In 
keeping them there is great reward.' Your heart 
will be kept in perfect peace, as touching your 
assurance of salvation, in proportion as you 
trust God's Word." 



NURTURE AND ADMONITION 117 



CHAPTER X 
NURTURE AND ADMONITION 

IT IS hard to conceive of a greater religious 
mistake than that made by some parents who 
imagine that after a child has joined the Church 
that child's religious problem is solved. A se- 
rious part of that mistake is an exaggerated 
religious expectancy. A standard of Christian ex- 
cellence is in some homes set up for a child 
Church member higher than the parents require 
of themselves. If an old habit of carelessness, 
or an old habit of bad temper, or some irritating 
form of selfishness should break out, about the 
worst thing that could happen would be a sneer 
from an older Christian, with such stinging words 
as, 44 You are a pretty Church member, now, 
aren't you?" Yet just that thing does very of- 
ten happen, for, with some people, it is an in- 
grained conviction that when anyone joins the 
Church, perfection ought to be expected. 

It is a stumblingblock to many older people, 
to think that they are not good enough to be 
Church members, and some foolish parents put 
a stumblingblock in the way of children who 
really love our Saviour and deeply want to con- 



118 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



fess their faith in him by joining the Church, by 
telling those children that they will have to be a 
good deal better than they are yet before it will 
be right for them to join the Church. It is not 
uncommon to have parents who, though Church 
members, are given to outbursts of temper and 
such sins as backbiting, and who nevertheless 
feel that it is all right for them to be Church 
members, oppose their children's wish to join the 
Church on the ground that those children are not 
so good as Christians ought to be. 

When asked if they are as good as Christians 
ought to be, they are frank enough to say that 
they are not. When it is pointed out to them, 
they quickly see the inconsistency of setting up 
for a child a requirement for Church membership 
which is higher than that exacted of their own 
lives. Also, if it is patiently pointed out to them 
they see, as they had not seen before, that for all 
of us, both adults and children, the ground on 
which any of us may have the right of Church 
membership is not our own goodness but solely 
our faith in Jesus Christ. The effect of a better 
understanding of this truth should be a quicker 
sympathy for the child Church member, a chok- 
ing out of the impulse to nag a child Church 
member for shortcomings. If it is normally true 



NURTURE AND ADMONITION 119 



of an adult Church member that in spite of 
Church membership the life is marked by many 
shortcomings, it is no less true, and ought to be 
expected to be even more markedly true, of a 
child Church member that there will be short- 
comings. Among all the forms of cruelty to 
children one of the meanest and most inexcusable 
is the sneer that would discourage the child 
Church member in his little lapses from Chris- 
tian consistency. Following his first Communion 
the child should, in great sympathy and tender- 
ness, be taught, not that his warfare is ended, but 
that his enlistment has just taken place in that 
war which shall never cease until death. 

Sunday afternoon following the first Commun- 
ion ought to be a time for some very precious 
confidences. The parents' experience may be 
the basis for such helpful counsel as will save the 
son or the daughter from some discouragements 
that often come but which, by proper counsel, 
may be escaped. But the big thing is the feeling 
of a new bond, a blessed spiritual seal upon the 
tie of natural affection. 

When a child joins the Church, the parental 
responsibility is enlarged, not diminished. It is 
quite true that from this time forward the Chris- 
tian boy or girl takes upon self a responsibility 



120 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



for right living which had previously been largely 
borne by the parents. But the field of right liv- 
ing is now so much larger that the full coopera- 
tion of both parent and child is needed for Chris- 
tian fruitfulness. It is with human life much as 
it is with tree life. Childhood corresponds some- 
what to that stage in the nursery where the fu- 
ture fruit trees, whip size, are massed together. 
Then for both the child and for the tree comes 
the adolescent stage, the transplanting from the 
mass position to the individualized position. 
Just as the young withe of a tree is separated 
from the massed companions and given its roomy 
place in the orchard, so the boy or the girl coming 
to the consciousness of individual responsibility 
must have a new position accorded to him in the 
family life. He must have a larger freedom, 
must be trusted with a widening responsibility, 
in the sphere of self-determined conduct. But 
when the young tree has been transplanted to 
the orchard, the orchardist's care is not dimin- 
ished. Its welfare is more on his heart than ever. 
He gives it more personal attention than ever. 

The country is full of orchards that were once 
most promising and are now all but ruined just 
because proper attention was not given to the 
young trees after they were transplanted. For 



NURTURE AND ADMONITION 121 



exactly the same reason many a boy and girl 
Christian never grew into the fruitful followers 
of Christ they might have become. They did 
not get the right kind of personal attention when 
they passed from the child-group stage of family 
life into the personal-responsibility stage of char- 
acter growth. Parents relaxed their concern for 
the spiritual life at the very point where it ought 
to have become more definite and direct. Just 
as the young tree, when it is given its individual 
roominess in the orchard, if it gets the right kind 
of care, will grow much more rapidly than it did 
when it was matted in a mass of sprouts, so a boy 
or a girl coming into the consciousness of personal 
relation to Jesus Christ, if given the right kind of 
spiritual nurture, will advance rapidly in Chris- 
tian stature. 

The young tree must be properly pruned, must 
have plant food in abundance, must have plenty 
of moisture, must have the orchardist's watch- 
fulness against all the enemies to tree life that so 
abound in these days. So precisely must the 
young Church member have watchful attention 
in the matter of all that will nourish the spirit- 
ual life, and in the matter of guarding the spirit- 
ual life against all its natural enemies. As the 
orchardist is to the young tree, when it is given 



122 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



its roomy place among the other trees, so is the 
parent to the child Church member, when the boy 
or the girl is given individual responsibility by 
coming to the Communion table with other Chris- 
tians. 

From the first there should be established the 
habit of frank and intimate talks on topics touch- 
ing Christian life. A certain natural shyness 
will need to be overcome. Especially with boys 
in the teen age, particularly the early part of it, 
there will be a developing reserve, which must be 
respected in regard to some experiences. This, 
however, will not make impossible the closest in- 
timacy between a father and son. Family wor- 
ship will have a new significance, and will present 
a new opportunity, when the children become 
communicants. Every member of the family 
old enough to read may take a turn in reading a 
verse in the worship at the home altar. While 
the daily family worship may have to be brief, 
and of course in each home must be adapted to 
its own conditions, it may be that on Sunday 
evenings more time than usual can be given to 
this particular form of family fellowship. 

In a certain large family, whose members were 
scattered during the week, but who, for the most 
part, could be together on Sunday evening, it 



NURTURE AND ADMONITION 123 



was the custom to read, verse about, not one but 
several chapters, occasionally even an entire 
brief book of the Bible. They had learned to 
find pleasure in lingering together over the Word 
of God. Then, before the head of the family led 
in prayer, opportunity was given to each member 
of the family to suggest persons or causes to pray 
about. The opportunity was used, too. Any 
visitor in that home on such a Sunday evening 
could not fail to be impressed by the unitedness, 
the earnestness, and the blessedness of that fam- 
ily worship. Not the least of the benefits was 
the keeping open of the channels of spiritual in- 
timacy among the members of that household. 
The custom was more than interesting. It was 
spiritually nourishing. And it was not only giv- 
ing spiritual food to the hungry soul, it was doing 
something else, possibly quite as important, cer- 
tainly more rare. It was creating appetite for 
spiritual food. For a big part of the nurture 
problem in the Christian home is to create and 
develop taste for the spiritual. 

Spiritual taste needs to be cultivated. It 
ought not to be thought strange, or a reason for 
staying at home and reading the Sunday paper, 
or staying away from church to walk through the 
fields and the woods, or a reason for autoing to 



124 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



the country or spending Sunday in visiting in- 
stead of going to church, if one likes to do these 
things more than he likes to go to church. The 
sin and the spiritual hurt are not in having these 
natural tastes, but in letting them rule our lives, 
to the neglect of what is meant for our higher 
good. 

All this must be carefully explained to the 
Christian boy and girl. They must be helped to 
see that one of the big things in being a Christian 
is to delight in the law of the Lord, not only to 
observe and do what God commands but also to 
find pleasure in so doing. Older Christians, out 
of their own experience, ought to be able to ex- 
plain to these young disciples of Jesus that, if they 
will be faithful and diligent in doing the things a 
Christian ought to do, the result will be that little 
by little and more and more they will want to do 
them ; indeed, that to do them and keep on doing 
them is the only way to be happy at all. Make 
it clear that it is nothing to be discouraged about, 
nothing to justify the fear that one is not a true 
Christian, if in the heart there is more liking for 
a novel than for the Bible, more pleasure in going 
to a party than in going to church or prayer meet- 
ing. The Bible and church and prayer meeting 
and kindred agencies are meant to minister to our 



NURTURE AND ADMONITION 125 



spiritual life, and we have to learn to want our 
spiritual life ministered to. 

We do not have to learn to want our physical 
life ministered to. We do have to learn to want 
our spiritual life ministered to. Therein lies part 
of the benefit of faithful reading of the Bible, 
faithful church attendance, faithful fellowship 
in the prayer meeting. All such things tend to 
make spiritual food necessary to our comfort. 
The parent of a Christian son or daughter has no 
more important first task in Christian nurture 
than that of helping the young follower of Christ 
to see the importance of acquiring a taste for the 
spiritual, and of inspiring him to use the means 
for its acquisition. 

Sunday table talk is of great importance. A 
quickened breakfast anticipation of blessing in 
the house of the Lord will go far toward making 
the day rich in Christian experience. United 
prayer in the morning for God's help to the minis- 
ter, to those who lead in the service of praise, to 
those who come to the house of God with burdens, 
to all who would honor Jesus Christ, will not only 
bring blessing to the service; it will also bring 
spiritual quickening to all who engage in that 
morning prayer. Thoughts ought to be turned 
also to those who neglect public worship. Per- 



126 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



haps a telephone call, or an offer to drop around 
on the way to church and pick up a friend, may 
induce some one to go who otherwise would have 
remained away. But the thought here is pri- 
marily of the value of such effort to the one 
who makes the effort. It brings him closer to 
Christ, makes him feel more within the will of 
Christ for his own life. In a home from which 
such influences go out, it is much easier for the 
young Church member to grow in grace and in 
the knowledge of Christ. 

And who can measure the possibilities of the 
Sunday dinner? It may be one of the greatest 
blessings to the home, or one of the evils that 
blight it most. For some it is an hour of the veri- 
est indulgence of the flesh, a time for gluttony, 
a time in which there is no thought of God and no 
talk about his Kingdom. And even for the 
Christian, who has been to Church, it may be a 
time for letting loose wild tongues in criticism, 
criticism of the minister, of his sermon, of his 
prayer, even of his clothes, and criticism of the 
choir, and criticism of prominent members. 
However unworthy all this is, the worst of it all is 
the atmosphere it creates. It breeds prejudice and 
makes it harder for any young follower of Christ 
in that home to become a growing Christian. 



NURTURE AND ADMONITION 127 



Yet this shows but half. There is another 
side, a brighter side. The Sunday dinner may 
be the best home hour of the week. It may be 
the least hurried, the meal to be most leisurely 
enjoyed. If a stranger may be brought home 
from church to share in the family feast, it will 
help the sense of having the Master in the midst. 
His part in the good cheer of the occasion will be 
reverently recognized in the blessing invoked at 
the beginning. Absent ones will be thought of 
and talked of affectionately. Plans of common 
interest will be discussed. What each one found 
helpful in the morning worship will be brought 
out. Things will be tactfully said to increase in 
the minds of the younger people their love for 
God's house. Some quickening suggestions from 
the message, it might well be, will be talked of in 
the direction of definite plans for carrying them 
out. In such a home it will come about that the 
young people get accustomed to thinking of going 
to church, not merely to spend an hour in con- 
ventional fashion, not merely to keep up a good 
habit, but to worship God, to quicken good will, 
to get spiritual refreshing and renewing and in- 
spiration to do something worth while in the 
spirit of the Master and in the service of others. 

If health were always good, if dispositions were 



128 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



always sweet, if willingness always abounded and 
willfulness never intruded, some unpleasant re- 
sponsibilities might be escaped. The only need 
would be nurture, and admonition might be 
dropped from the vocabulary of the home. But 
parents are charged to rear their children in both 
the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. 
Both must be in the Lord. Hot-tempered scold- 
ing is not admonition in the Lord. Neither is 
whipping a child in anger. If anyone is moved to 
think that the fathers worked the rod overtime, 
let such a one have a care lest vital discipline be 
neglected. Some strange fads about the moral 
make-up of child nature are abroad in the land. 
Among all the misadventures in home-making, 
let us pray earnestly to be delivered from the 
fate of having our vine and fig tree next door to 
a neighbor who rears his children on the theory 
that their wills should never be crossed. 

It is a child's right to learn obedience. The 
heritage of self-mastery comes only that way. 
One learns obedience by having his will up 
against a higher will. Life is always bringing that 
challenge, and he is pitifully unprepared to meet 
it who in his home life has always been allowed to 
have his own way. One does not like to hear the 
saying that a child's will should be broken. 



NURTURE AND ADMONITION 129 



Rather a child's will needs to be taught subor- 
dination to a higher will. It is surprising how early 
in life pride rules the will. A four-year-old boy 
was told, at the end of play time, to pick up his 
toys and put them in their proper place. Im- 
pulsively he said that he would not do it, and 
then, having said it, there was just enough Scotch 
in him to stick to it. Back and forth for over an 
hour went the tug of war between him and his 
mother. As it turned out, that struggle was a 
crisis in the boy's life. Never after was there 
serious trouble in getting him to yield to will 
higher than his own. But his will was not broken. 
It was surrendered. It cost him a struggle to 
yield. He would rather have taken a dozen 
whippings. In fact, just before the issue was 
reached, he cried out, " Oh mamma, come and 
spank me and let's quit." But he was not whipped 
that time. A whipping would have been the 
shortest, easiest way out, but it could not have 
yielded the same gain in character. 

When to punish, and when not to punish, when 
to use authority and when to trust the judgment 
of a son or daughter, must always be perplexing 
problems in the growing period of boys and girls. 
No one can lay down specific rules suitable in all 
cases. General principles must govern, and 



130 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



every father and mother must apply these ac- 
cording to their own circumstances. Children 
need both guidance and government, and they 
need to be trusted with responsibility. Parents 
are often sorely tried to determine just when they 
ought to decide questions for their children, and 
when they ought to allow the children to decide 
for themselves. 

If a boy is allowed to decide a question for him- 
self, his decision should not be interfered with. 
No matter if he makes a mistake. He is learning 
to use his own judgment. On the other hand, if 
the parent deems it wise to make the decision, 
he should not allow himself to be argued out of it. 
Sometimes a parental decision may be explained 
so as to seem reasonable to the child. If so, well 
and good. If not so, still well and good. It is 
one of the best lessons the child ever learned, if 
he is taught to obey the higher will. There are 
some things to be frankly discussed with the 
child. There are other things about which it is a 
mistake to allow argument. A wise parent will 
make proper exceptions. But the responsibility 
belongs to the parent, and if that parent is a true 
friend of God he will " command his children and 
his household after him, that they may keep the 
way of Jehovah." 



FITTING FOR FORTUNE 131 



CHAPTER XI 
FITTING FOR FORTUNE 

A MONG the things which have a telling effect 
AJL either for good or for ill, both upon indi- 
vidual character and upon social life, is the posses- 
sion of property. Out of a right attitude toward 
the things which one is allowed to call his own may 
come a cluster of virtues, attractive in quality 
and effective for social welfare. Likewise out 
of a wrong attitude toward these things may 
come a cluster of vices, humanly degrading and 
socially injurious. It is one of the very impor- 
tant duties of home life to make this attitude 
the right attitude. It is part of the task of home 
training both to teach the laws in accordance 
with which prosperity normally comes and to 
instill the principles in accordance with which 
one is fit to handle possessions. How to get is 
a lesson worthy to be learned. How to use is a 
lesson that must be learned. 

In the elementary phases of the subject, it is 
alphabetical in the truth about property that 
God promises prosperity to those who keep his 
commandments. It is fundamental to right 
thinking about possessions to keep God in all 



132 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



one's thoughts about them. The man who 
embarks upon any business enterprise in dis- 
regard of God is doing wrong both by his soul 
and by his business. Success is of God. The 
laws by which success is achieved are God's 
laws. Success ought always to be sought in the 
fear of God, through continuous trust in God. 
That conviction should be the first article of 
faith in the economic creed of the home. Here, 
as everywhere else, it must be written, "In the 
beginning God." 

Immediately it will be recognized that God's 
promise of prosperity is based upon certain 
clearly defined duties. These duties must be 
learned, lived, and taught in the home. Like 
all other home teaching, they are to be wrought 
into the precepts, into the habits, into the very 
fiber of character, of all in the home. That is 
one reason why home life is as it is. The long 
years of human childhood, the plastic quality 
of child nature, the enduring impress of truth 
stamped in by the power of persistent affectional 
association, produce just the situation in which 
the things that people ought to live by may be 
shaped into the automatic forces impelling and 
controlling fife. Every generation is in some 
measure different from its predecessor. But 



FITTING FOR FORTUNE 133 



with all the temptation to scrap old beliefs, there 
will be a hallowed, keepsake sanctity clinging to 
beliefs bound up with what is beautiful in the 
memory of father and mother. For this cause 
and after this manner, God has given to the 
home the best chance of all to determine the 
succession of success. No man ought to be satis- 
fied with being successful himself. He ought to 
seek the success of his children and children's 
children. This is the way: Get God into their 
thoughts, and God's laws into their convictions. 

Some of the things that God requires of man 
as a condition of success are simple and obvious. 
While it is true that many people keep these 
requirements without any thought of honoring 
God, sometimes even in defiance of his rights 
over human life, and are so far successful, never- 
theless it is the wisdom of life to hold fast to 
God's will as the ground upon which we do the 
things that make for success. For example, 
industry is one of the conditions of prosperity. 
If a man will not work, he has no right to eat. 
There is no excellence without great labor. 
There are people who believe that, and act upon 
that belief, who do not believe in God; or, if they 
do, they choose to work wholly for reasons of 
their own, and not at all because God commands 



134 



THE HOME GOD MEANT 



industry. They do right, in so far as they are 
industrious, and God who makes his sun 4 4 to 
rise on the evil and the good," blesses their 
industry, though they do not acknowledge him. 
What they ought to do is to work diligently, 
not for the mere sake of success but for the 
high purpose of obeying and pleasing God, and 
to expect success as the favor of God. The 
distinction is big, and possessive of bigness for 
human life. On its basis the child may be 
taught religiously the importance of work, the 
sacredness of work, the high meaning and motive 
of work. 

Accordingly, it is proper and important that 
a child should have definite work to do. In the 
less advantaged long ago, that was a rule easier 
of working than now. There were numerous 
chores to be done, and in a well-ordered home 
every member had his definite work. Now it is 
necessary to provide gymnasium and stadium 
to insure needed exercise. One of the distinct 
dangers to be guarded against in a home of 
affluence is the snare of privileged idleness. No 
legacy of money can be large enough to compen- 
sate for the tragic loss to character in a child 
allowed to grow up with no task dependent upon 
his toil. 



FITTING FOR FORTUNE 135 



There are many things about this daily defi- 
nite work required of the children in the home 
that are important. It should always be done. 
It should always be done well. Care and 
thoroughness and pride of achievement are im- 
portant, not only in respect to this little task, 
but in respect to matters far more important, 
namely, the bearing of these habits of care and 
thoroughness and pride of achievement upon the 
whole reach of a growing man's power and 
undertaking. It is a great thing for any life 
when the joy of work is discovered. This is 
higher than the pleasure of play. That, indeed, 
is legitimate, and one of the great blessings of 
life. Blessed is the man who never gets too old 
to delight in a game. "All work and no play 
makes Jack a dull boy," is a true proverb. But 
along with it ought to go another. 6 ' All play 
and no work makes Jack a bonehead." God 
meant not only that work should condition 
success, but also that work in itself, for its own 
sake, should be part of the richness and sweet- 
ness of living. They are guilty of a cruel wrong 
to childhood who fail to drill the little ones in 
the discipline of exacted work allotted to them. 

In an earlier chapter mention was made of 
thrift. If husband and wife start their home- 



136 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



building program on that basis, their children 
will be born in an atmosphere of thrift. That is 
a happy state to be born in, far better than the 
lap of luxury. Most of the rich people became 
so by industry and thrift. It is vastly to their 
credit if in their days of plenty they maintain 
their home in such a way that their children 
will unconsciously grow up after the example of 
their parents. Every child is so far well started 
in life who is taught to save part of his money. 
Some of it he may earn. Some of it he may get 
by gifts. From all of it he ought to learn to save 
by self-denial. It is curious how these lessons 
learned in early life keep clinging to the habits 
of age. It is quite common to see men of inde- 
pendent fortunes do such things as going around 
the house turning off unnecessary lights, figuring 
on backs of old envelopes, and the like. Smile, 
if you wish, but if you want to be somebody and 
own something, go and do likewise, and, if you 
love your children, for their advantage teach 
them so. 

The possession of property has as its chief 
implication the fact that there are others. The 
essence of possession is having a better title than 
that held by anyone else. Society is organized 
on the basis of distributed possessions, of recog- 



FITTING FOR FORTUNE 137 



nized titles. These titles must have their root 
in righteousness. If a man lays claim to a piece 
of property, he must have a good title to it, a 
better title than any rival claimant. Whatever 
objections theorists may urge against the doc- 
trine of private property, it must be recognized 
that ownership of property tends to industry, 
tends to the domestic virtues, tends to worthy 
ambition, tends to good citizenship. It is an 
all-round wholesome thing that property rights 
should be respected. In a general way, it is 
laying good foundations to teach one to say, 
4 ' This piece of property belongs to me, and does 
not belong to my neighbor," and to add to it 
the further saying, equally rooted in conviction, 
" That piece of property belongs to my neighbor 
and does not belong to me." 

And so, following the lesson of industry and 
the lesson of thrift, should come the lesson of 
property rights, such a lesson, of course, as a 
child can understand. If a child is to learn to 
respect the rights of others, he must be given 
the chance to see that his rights are respected. 
What is his is not another's. What is another's 
is not his. That is simple, and it is as funda- 
mental as it is simple. There is no difficulty in 
getting a child, little or big, to claim his own. 



138 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



When disputed, his claim should be supported. 
Persuading him at times to yield what belongs 
to him for the pleasure of a playmate brings in 
another important lesson, to follow later. But 
here the clear principle is to make it appear that 
in the home the property rights of everyone, no 
child excepted, are to be respected. 

Strange as it may seem, some parents are 
themselves the greatest transgressors of this 
principle. They will take liberties with a child's 
property which they would not think of taking 
with the property of an adult. Yet when its use 
is desired, the child owner should be consulted 
as respectfully as a grown-up owner. In rural 
communities, neglect to observe this rule has 
made many a son and daughter impatient to 
get away from the farm. Johnnie was overjoyed 
when he was told that the colt belonged to him. 
He could name it, could take care of it, and he 
had many a happy hour with it. But by and 
by in bitterness of heart he learned that Johnnie's 
colt was father's horse. 

In countless little ways, children see their 
rights disregarded, as though right were not in 
the thing itself, but rather in the greater pow r er 
of a grown-up to do as he pleases, simply because 
he has the power. It will not be strange if he 



FITTING FOR FORTUNE 139 



grows up with the idea of taking for his own use 
whatever he can seize and hold. On the other 
hand, to teach him that his claim to certain 
possessions is better than the claim of anyone 
else, and that in his home his rights are always 
recognized, and that on the same principle he 
must recognize the better claim of others to what 
they possess, is to be laying the foundations of 
both character and good citizenship. Moreover, 
it will increase his contentment in the home, will 
make him feel that it is worth while to work 
hard and save by self-denial in order to acquire 
possession of something he would like to have. 

One of the corollaries of all this is the quickened 
ambition to possess property. Within that am- 
bition is the passion to possess a home, a noble 
ambition and an ambition that is in itself en- 
nobling. Here is a large family of very poor 
people. The little house they are able to rent is 
all too small, and it seems impossible with such 
a family in it to keep it neat and even sanitary. 
The father's wages are small and irregular. They 
are always on the edge of want and always in 
the midst of discomfort. Then one day a friend 
— this is a true story — saw a chance for them to 
make a start toward buying a home. The idea 
woke them all up. The older girls were earning 



140 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



wages. The father was fired with a new ambi- 
tion to fit himself for a better and more reliable 
job. They were all enthusiasm for all the hard 
work, for all the close economy, for all the self- 
denial, that would be needed before the home 
would be paid for. But the prospect of having 
a home which they could call their own at once 
transformed that whole family life. 

God meant it that way. He made people that 
way. His promise of prosperity on the basis of 
keeping his commandments is addressed to 
people having natures that can be fired by such 
an ambition. 

But "the best is yet to be the last . . . for which 
the first was made. ' ' He learns but less than half 
who masters all the lessons of hard work and 
thrift and self-denial and property rights, and 
wins a home of his own, lays up "much goods" 
for many years, and dreams of ease and merry- 
making for himself. He has made himself but 
fit to get fortune, while abiding unfit to use it. 
It is one of the terrible ironies of life that great 
possessions, however hardly and honestly earned, 
bring not satisfaction but rather care and anxiety 
and haunting discontent and weariness with life. 
That is to say, great possessions work out that 
result if sought and acquired for their own sake. 



FITTING FOR FORTUNE 141 



It is profoundly and forever true that a man's 
life does not consist in the abundance of the 
things which he possesses. 

It has been told that Hofmann's picture of 
The Rich Young Ruler had this said of it by 
the author to a group of friends who were 
praising it: "This picture will never be a good 
seller. People who put their money in pictures 
will be shy of the lesson here." Every man who 
is making money, or anxious to make money, 
or needing to make money, would do well to 
have that picture always before him, would 
do well to have it in a well-lighted place in the 
living room of his home, that it might say to 
him, and keep saying to him and to his children 
after him, " If riches increase, set not your heart 
thereon." Follow that up by another saying, 
"They that are minded to be rich fall into a 
temptation and a snare," and then come with 
another follow up, "How hardly shall they that 
have riches enter into the kingdom of God," 
and then still another that not only piles up a 
further warning but also suggests the way to 
escape the danger inherent in the pursuit of 
money. This last is a very old proverb, but 
never has it carried a more timely message than 
in this very hour: 



142 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



"There is that scattereth, and increaseth yet 
more; 

And there is that witholdeth more than is meet, 
but it tendeth only to want." 

There is no poverty like that of the soul that 
is not rich toward God, and that poverty comes 
by witholding more than is meet. The habit of 
witholding more than is meet is the ally of the 
spiritual enemies lurking in the longing for riches. 
It seems like a strange thing to say to a class of 
learners in the school of life, after you have 
taught them to work and to sacrifice and to save, 
that saving, unless it is watched, will tend to 
poverty. The first teaching about saving is that 
it tends to possession. The next thing about 
saving is that it tends to poverty. But both 
teachings are true. The trouble with the world 
to-day is in no small part due to the fact that 
most people have been taught only that saving 
tends to possession. Like any other half truth, 
the portion of truth that is in it makes it a snare. 
It is but a devil's ambush. 

Here we are, then, at the peak of tins chapter. 
One of the major lessons to be learned in the 
home is that of being fitted for fortune. That 
may be what we call good fortune, or it may be 
what we call bad fortune. But whichever it is, 



FITTING FOR FORTUNE 143 



the good of life is to found fitted for fortune 
when it comes and however it comes. Some- 
times people used to luxury, by reverse of 
fortune, become suddenly poor, and they do not 
know how to be poor. The worst of it is not in 
being poor, but in not knowing how to be poor. 
Paul was in prison, but he knew how to be master 
of the situation, even in prison. He had learned 
in the school of Christ how to be nobly poor and 
how to be nobly rich. He had been initiated. He 
belonged to the Phi Beta Kappa of sainthood. 
He had learned how. 

Success for everyone does not mean posses- 
sions. Prosperity may or may not mean worldly 
goods. God has other ways of making good his 
promise to his children than by weighing out 
his benefits in the world's scales of success. 
Blessed are the children born in homes where 
the benefits of God are not measured alone in 
terms of material good. Happy is that home 
where from first to last in all the lessons about 
work and thrift and rights and possessions, it is 
bravely taught that, when we do our best as 
God has commanded, whatever our ensuing for- 
tune, God's will is sure to prevail and God's 
will is always good will in love. 

The more earnest heed should be given to 



144 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



that in the experience of what the world calls 
good fortune. Here is the call to the home to 
teach with great fidelity and earnestness the 
Christian message of stewardship. While the 
word has a much wider significance than in its 
relation to money, that is the aspect of it in 
point here. 

Let the children be taught how to give as the 
Lord prospers them. If systematic and pro- 
portionate giving has been the home practice 
before the children were born, it will be all the 
easier to teach them this lesson as they come to 
years of understanding. The best approach is 
through the Bible. Bible sayings about giving, 
both in the Old Testament and in the New 
Testament, should be marked and memorized. 
From these it will be evident that God has ever 
taught his people to set apart a definite pro- 
portion of income to be dedicated to the Lord. 
It will also be evident that this proportion was 
never less than one tenth. Start there. Build 
upon that. The Christian ought to give to the 
Lord at least a tenth of his income. Help the 
children to start that way. Many reasons can 
be given for it. The work is greater now and 
needier than when the Jews gave a tenth. Pro- 
portionate giving is enjoined in the New Testa- 



FITTING FOR FORTUNE 145 



ment. It makes giving a joy, where otherwise 
it easily becomes grudging. All who practice 
proportionate giving find increasing delight in it. 
Let the children early learn that secret of hap- 
piness. 

A companion lesson is that of systematic giv- 
ing. By this is meant distribution of what is set 
apart as the Lord's portion among the different 
objects of need. Help the children to make a 
survey of these objects — Church support, Sun- 
day-school support, Sabbath School Missions, 
Home Missions, Foreign Missions, and all the 
rest. Teach them how to make their reading 
increase their pleasure in giving, by learning 
what the different Boards are doing with the 
money which they give. The interest will be 
kept widening through taking knowledge of all 
worthy objects of help. What a beautiful lesson 
to learn, that giving to the poor is all one with 
giving to the Lord! And so, as the lesson keeps 
getting learned, the uses of what we possess 
come to be the most sacred aspect of possessions. 

The best part of all this is that it is the cure 
which grace offers for the disease of loving 
money. It renders the devout Christian, no 
matter how fast he makes money, no matter how 
much money he makes, immune from the subtle 



146 



THE HOME GOD MEANT 



! 



poison diffused in the path of riches. Money- 
making may not only be robbed of its spiritual 
dangers but glorified into a noble service of Jesus 
Christ and humanity. Let no one minimize the 
dangers, or doubt the glory. Safety, service, 
and satisfaction are found in a Christlike sense 
of stewardship. 



i 
i 



FINDING FELLOWSHIP 147 



CHAPTER XII 
FINDING FELLOWSHIP 

IT IS not good for men to be alone. It is not 
good for a child to be alone. It is not good 
for a Christian to be alone. One of the most re- 
vealing things Jesus ever said was in the words, 
" The Father . . . hath not left me alone." God 
does not expect anyone in the Christian struggle 
to be without companionship. He does expect of 
parents that they will see to it that their children 
have companions, the right kind of companions. 

There are three stages in life awakening. 
There is first the realization of self; then there is 
the realization of others; and finally there is the 
realization of kindred spirits. All people are not 
alike. All people do not affect us alike. The 
heart has, and must have, its own law of selec- 
tion. While one's duties range to the limit of 
human habitation and one's neighbor is the per- 
son in need anywhere in the broad earth, and 
while, on the other hand, one is measurably in- 
fluenced for good or evil by the tides of human 
life coming in from the uttermost shores, yet the 
heart makes for itself a closer and a narrower en- 
vironment, involuntarily selecting and gathering 



148 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



around itself in nearest intimacy a chosen few. 

It is this inner circle that is mightiest in its in- 
fluence upon unfolding character. The nearer 
environment has most direct power in molding 
life. It sometimes happens in a climate gener- 
ally severe and hostile to vegetation, where the 
land is prevailingly barren, that there will be a 
little dale sheltered by mountain friendship from 
wind and storm, open to the warmest rays of the 
sun, with most fertile soil, and supplied with an 
abundance of water, yielding its plenteous har- 
vest. So, also, in a region noted for its salubri- 
ous climate and alluvial soil, and blessed with all 
conditions favorable to the earth's increase, there 
will be a knob of stony ground, shedding rain like 
the roof of a house, upon which nothing can 
grow. In each of these cases, one good in a broad 
environment of evil, the other bad in a broad en- 
vironment of good, the productiveness is in direct 
contrast to the general conditions, and is due 
wholly to the influence of the narrower environ- 
ment. If that be true of soils, it is much more 
true of souls. It is the nearest relationships, the 
closest intimacies, that count most. 

Boys and girls are each entitled to three friends. 
The first is an older friend, of superior attain- 
ment and personality, one to be intensely ad- 



FINDING FELLOWSHIP 149 



mired and imitated, such a one as the youth 
would like to be at the same age. Happy the 
boy who has such a friend in his father. Happy 
the girl who has such a friend in her mother. 

The next is a friend of one's own age, with kin- 
dred home life, with the same background of 
character-shaping influences, the same stand- 
ards of right and wrong, a chum to compare 
notes with, chafe with under similar home re- 
straints, stand with under gang pressure to depart 
from home ideals, brood with over identically 
alike back-number fathers, who are equally hard 
to manage. After a frank exchange of confi- 
dences, it is easier to take up again the heavy 
burden of adolescent responsibility for setting 
the world right. 

The third friend will be younger, the little 
"copy cat" of the family. This has its em- 
barrassments, but it also has its immense value 
in character-building. When a young man or 
young woman wakes up to the fact that some 
one is idolizing and imitating and realizes how 
easy it is for little feet innocent of the snares of 
life to be led astray, the effect is sobering. A 
new motive for walking carefully has thrust it- 
self into the mind. They are wise parents who 
instill into the hearts of the older children a fine 



150 



THE HOME GOD MEANT 



sense of responsibility for influencing the younger 
brothers and sisters in right ways of living. 

Some things we may all do well as individuals, 
and of course we each have individual respon- 
sibilities. But there is a wide held of endeavor 
in which there must be cooperation. Family 
cooperation is highly important in the religious 
undertaking. In every aspect of home life it 
is important, but it is supremely important in the 
religious aspects of home life. It is a good thing 
to see that importance from the point of view of 
the values of Christian fellowship. It is a good 
thing for a family to realize, and keep alive and 
warm in their feelings the realization that they 
are all loved by and all love the same Saviour, to 
quicken in the family circle a common enthu- 
siasm for the same church, to support in each 
other all the loyalties in Christian service. 
What all do is easier for anyone to do. If by 
common consent it is a family custom for every- 
one to go to church, it will come to be taken for 
granted that the family pew will be kept filled. 
The outward ties of Christian fellowship are thus 
strengthened, and by being strengthened they 
help to hold fast the best traditions of home 
life against the invasions of influences tend- 
ing to lower the standards. If, further, it is es- 



FINDING FELLOWSHIP 151 



tablished as a family ideal that of course all will 
go to prayer meeting, another fellowship force is 
possessed. It is so much easier to do anything 
when one's dearest companions do and want to 
do the same thing. A house divided against it- 
self cannot stand. A house united in itself does 
not easily fall. 

But there is an inner fellowship, as well as an 
outward fellowship. The growing mind is al- 
ways a questioning mind. Strange questions are 
asked by tiny tongues. Sometimes these are too 
deep for human answer, but one of their uses is to 
open and keep open the channel of confiding good 
will. Many things a child learns on the street 
that were better learned at home. The answer 
to some questions sure to arise may wisely by an- 
ticipation be delicately suggested, and the mind 
in some measure safeguarded from gross things 
which will inevitably come from coarse com- 
panions. 

A careful parent will gently lead the unfolding 
mind of a child into a knowledge of things which 
it is important for him to know. Among mat- 
ters of important knowledge will be vital things 
in religion. As far as possible, home talks about 
the ever-deepening experiences in Christian 
thinking and living ought to be natural, and kept 



152 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



natural. They ought, therefore, to be frequent 
and frank. Many such things are hard to talk 
about. That is one reason why ability to talk 
about them ought to be cultivated in the fellow- 
ship of the home. A fear of being laughed down, 
or of being criticized, or of not being able to make 
others understand, often pushes back an eager 
desire to talk about something in Christian ex- 
perience. A rightly ordered home life will make 
that fear impossible. An atmosphere of sym- 
pathy, of invitation, of responsiveness to diffi- 
dent ventures in telling about doubts or desires, 
depressions or victories, temptations or visions, 
will bind the whole fellowship of family life in a 
closer union with the Lord. 

Many viewpoints challenge watchfulness over 
children's choice of companions. It is natural 
and right and necessary that the young should 
have their own social set. The democracy of 
childhood is one of the most beautiful, as well as 
one of the most hopeful things in life. It is like- 
wise one of the things about which parents should 
be most watchful. Within the set there is al- 
ways a tendency to intimacies. How to guide 
children wisely in the formation of those intima- 
cies is an exceedingly difficult task. But it must 
be done. For that reason parents must ever be 



FINDING FELLOWSHIP 153 



seeking "the wisdom that is from above." For 
that reason, also, the children should be taught 
to think of their own homes as the best place on 
earth to have good times. Their eagerness to 
bring their playmates there should be encouraged. 
When a liking for children with lower home 
standards is discovered, as is bound sometimes 
to happen, checkmate the impulsive fondness for 
such companions not by forbidding it but by 
tactfully suggesting pity for a companion's lack 
of the best home training, and by the further tact- 
ful suggestion that the better-trained child help 
the companion to overcome these defects in 
training. This will preserve confidence in the 
higher ideal, will expose the defect in the lower 
habit, will stimulate active influence for good, 
which is always the best protection against in- 
fluence from evil. Besides, it leaves the child 
free and unopposed in his liking for his com- 
panion. In the end he will either outgrow that 
liking or make his companion more like himself. 

By every means possible the chance should be 
given and kept open for the formation of intima- 
cies with companions from homes of kindred 
ideals. There is hardly an angle of social rela- 
tionship from which this is not seen to be big with 
importance. There comes an age in which the 



154 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



ideas of the fellows look better than the ideas of 
the folks. If what the fellows say clashes with 
what the folks say, there may be difficult times 
at home. At best, these clashes are sure to come 
in some measure. But they can be minimized, 
and harm avoided, if the right kind of fellows 
can be found. 

Of course it ought not to be expected — indeed, 
it would be undesirable — that all should see ex- 
actly alike on all questions. There must be 
room for independent thinking, for the develop- 
ment of loyalty to principle, for cultivation ol 
sturdiness in standing by private conviction. It 
happens now and again that even in homes thor- 
oughly Christian, amusements are allowed that, 
for a few in the company, reared in other Chris- 
tian homes, will be taboo. It is not easy in such 
conditions to stand alone, and it may be still 
harder to keep bitterness out of the heart. Yet 
nothing is ever lost in worth-while friendship by 
standing unshaken by personal conviction, and 
much is gained, if, while being true to self, one is 
at the same time gracious to others who may, 
in all good conscience, look at things differently. 
No Christian may safely surrender or counsel 
surrender of convictions, in order to ease the 
struggle through a hard situation. There is that 



FINDING FELLOWSHIP 155 



stands aloof and yet increases respect. And 
there is that concedes conviction, but it tends 
to contempt. 

Fortunate are the young people whose home 
training has formed in them the habit of discrim- 
ination, the fine power of seeing fundamentals 
big and incidentals little, the common-sense habit 
of magnifying agreement in major things with 
smiling superiority to differences in minor things. 

It is very fortunate if the intimacies of youth 
do not bring the children of Christian homes un- 
der the compelling influence of companions who 
have little or no interest in what makes for Chris- 
tian character. If a lad is taking his ideas from 
fellows who think it old fogy and a badge of bond- 
age to be compelled to spend part of Sunday 
in church services, the resentment he nurses 
through the long prayer will most likely put him 
in a state of mind to make all the grace in the ser- 
mon ineffectual with him. Happily there are 
just as good fellows in the churchgoing group of 
youth as can be found anywhere. It is the high 
privilege of parents to see that the chance for in- 
timacies in that group is open and inviting. 

There will come, more quickly than parents are 
usually prepared for it, the time to decide about 
the college. It is a serious menace of the times 



156 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



that parents do not decide which college. Too 
largely even the boys and girls do not really de- 
cide it for themselves. It is practically decided 
for them by other boys and girls. It is most 
natural for one to want to go to college with the 
old high-school crowd. These high-school friend- 
ships are fine, but often the leadership that starts 
a drift toward particular institutions has no in- 
terest whatever in the college qualities for which 
Christian parents ought to have the most con- 
cern. Few influences in the period of youth are 
so character-determining as college friendships. 

The four years at college make one of life's 
dearest dreams. As far as possible, every boy 
and girl ought to have the chance to have that 
dream. Among all the sacrifices that parents 
make for their children, none is more worth-while 
than this. With the opportunities for self-help, 
and with the colleges inviting students who want 
to work their way through, the dream may be 
realized by almost anyone who has been suffi- 
ciently stimulated to desire it. 

In going away from home for any cause there 
is always a spiritual hazard. The home atmos- 
phere no longer surrounds. There are many con- 
tacts with men and women who hold different 
ideas from those under which the youth has been 



FINDING FELLOWSHIP 157 



reared. There comes an intellectual awaken- 
ing. Questions keep stirring in the mind. New 
interests take attention. In the average college 
world, particularly, one faces suggestions, some- 
times bold, sometimes covert, that the Christian 
faith is narrow and given up by men of intelli- 
gence. It is often true, also, that professors who 
thus undermine faith are strikingly attractive in 
the classroom, personally magnetic. In a cer- 
tain college for women, a young girl from a Chris- 
tian home came under the influence of a fasci- 
nating teacher who straightway won her heart. 
But a few years before that college was famous for 
its Christian influence. This teacher taught that 
girl that there is no life after death, that the 
Christian teaching of immortality is not true. 
Because she was personally so fascinating she 
was believed. Many of our colleges, with noble 
Christian traditions, do not to-day consider it 
any reflection on their educational reputation to 
have it said that some of their professors are 
openly agnostic or infidel. They are far more con- 
cerned for what they call academic freedom than 
for a definite Christian campus influence. 

It is not strange that many young people leave 
home warm-hearted Christians and return from 
college cold and indifferent if not definitely skep- 



158 



THE HOME GOD MEANT 



tical. That is why it is here urged so earnestly 
that parents should take an active interest, a 
controlling interest if need be, m.detennining the 
selection of the college. 

There are many points which go to make up 
college excellence. Certainly there must be the 
best in intellectual training. Certainly there 
must be a wise, properly guided and subordinated 
physical discipline. From the point of view of 
the Christian home, there must be the unmis- 
takable, strong Christian influence. The ad- 
vantage of the small Christian college is that it 
brings every student under the direct influence 
of men of finely trained and furnished minds 
which are at the same time earnestly and devot- 
edly Christian minds. 

It was said of Zechariah, the friend of sixteen- 
year-old KingUzziah, that his friend "had under- 
standing in the vision of God." It is a good 
thing to have a friend who has understanding in 
the vision of business. It is a good thing to 
have a friend who has understanding in the vi- 
sion of play. But best of all is the friend who 
has understanding in the vision of God. There 
are some men into the zone of whose life we can- 
not come w T ith a proposition without having to 
face the question, Will it pay? There are other 



FINDING FELLOWSHIP 159 



men into the zone of whose lives we cannot come 
with our proposition without having to face the 
question, Will there be any fun in it? There are 
other men into the zone of whose lives we can- 
not come with our proposition without having to 
face that old-fashioned question, Is it right? No 
question that a parent has to wrestle with in 
thinking through life for a son or daughter is 
more vital than the question as to where to send 
children to college. 

In due time another type of fellowship emerges. 
Romance comes smiling around the home. Some- 
times it is most welcome, although at the best 
it portends a certain sadness in breaking up 
two homes to start a third home. At the worst, 
it may be harder to bear than death. Who can 
measure the disappointment and grief born of a 
misfit marriage for a cherished son or daughter? 
It is a joy of parental hearts to see their children 
happily married, to know that their ideals will be 
perpetuated in the homes of their children, to 
welcome the coming of grandchildren, to feel, 
in moving toward the bounds of life, that those 
who are coming after will not forget the Lord. 

There can be no doubt that many marriages 
are entered into hastily and with ruinous con- 
sequences. On the one hand may be recog- 



160 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



nized, perhaps, a growing prejudice against mar- 
riage among many young people, a preference for 
the liberty of the unmarried, a reluctance to as- 
sume the responsibilities of marriage. On the 
other hand, there is an equally marked tendency 
to minimize the responsibilities of marriage, to 
take a reckless chance, because it is felt that if a 
mistake is made, the tie can be readily broken, 
even without residence in Nevada. Both atti- 
tudes are selfishly wicked, and the second atti- 
tude is vicious as well. Marriage is honorable, 
a divinely ordained provision for the highest hu- 
man happiness, a social necessity, and for most 
people a solemn duty. 

There are and always have been noble men and 
women who for good and sufficient reasons have 
not married, who, though themselves not given 
to know the blessing of wedded life, have been 
unspeakable blessings to the world. There have 
been too many tragic disappointments, too many 
noble renunciations, too many brave devotions 
to service by lonely hearts, to admit of aught but 
the deepest respect for the unmarried. "The 
heart knoweth its own bitterness," its own secret 
with the Lord. These honorable exceptions, 
however, do but prove the rule of marriage as 
the duty of most. 



FINDING FELLOWSHIP 161 



Upon parents God has placed the responsi- 
bility for rearing children in the right kind of an- 
ticipation of it. Matchmaking, as commonly 
understood, is poor business. But indifference 
to the mating of sons and daughters is poor par- 
enthood. But what can a parent do? Young 
people are thrown together in all sorts of ways 
and the first thing they know they are in love. 
Any attempt to convince a young man or young 
woman that the object of love is unworthy only 
adds fuel to the flame. For love is a flame, and 
all attempts to blow it out do but add to the 
fierceness of its burning. 

All of this only increases the urgency of the 
responsibility. While it is true that the break- 
ing up of an infatuation after it is formed re- 
quires extraordinary tact and wisdom and pa- 
tience, very much can be done to prevent unwor- 
thy infatuation. This is a high home task. Of 
course, it is absurd to imagine that anyone can 
work out a set of rules for directing courtship, 
guaranteeing no mistakes. It is not even pos- 
sible for parents to choose the mates fitted to 
make their sons and daughters happy, and they 
would better not try. The constitutional rights 
to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, 
guarantee to men, and now, under the Nine- 



162 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



teenth Amendment, to women also, the indis- 
putable right to fall in love. And really the best 
way to get in love is to tumble in. It was that 
way in the beginning, always shall be, and ought 
to be so now. 

The best thing parents can do is to pre- 
pare their youth for the right kind of tumble. 
There are many practical details that are impor- 
tant, such as watching against undesirable ac- 
quaintance and company, seeing to it that there 
are ample chances for the right kind of acquaint- 
ance and companionship, with full opportunity 
for the cultivation of the right kind of intimacies. 
All painstaking about such externals is important 
enough. But there is something far more vital. 
It is a taking knowledge of the fact that the in- 
voluntary choices of the heart are according to a 
deep-seated inner nature. The most critical 
thing in home precaution, as touching this mat- 
ter, is to see to it, so far as faithful and wise train- 
ing can see to it, that an inner nature is developed 
that is most likely to fall in love with what is wor- 
thy in another. 

Take, for purposes of illustration, an extreme 
case. Suppose a daughter is reared to have 
great reverence for the name of God. There is 
only a remote chance that she would fall in love 



FINDING FELLOWSHIP 163 



with any man whom she knew to be given to 
coarse profanity. Or suppose she were reared 
to respect good, hard, honest work, and to have 
a contempt for any man having the habit of idle- 
ness and dissipation. There is a chance, but 
only a remote chance, that she would ''fall for" 
that sort of scamp. Fortunately, we are so made 
that loathing can be excited as well as infatuation. 
There are other reasons for careful and patient 
teaching of young hearts to love the true and the 
good and the beautiful, and to hate the vulgar 
and the coarse and the selfish and the worthless. 
But while we are teaching them to love virtues 
and hate vices, we are doing something else. We 
are doing much to safeguard them against the 
follies of unworthy infatuation. 

Besides this general building up of the right 
kind of inner life, fitted to make its own wise 
choice at the proper time, the bigness of what is at 
stake calls for very specific and careful teaching 
as to the nature of marriage and its responsibil- 
ities, the sacredness and high significance of love 
between a man and a woman. If young people 
have been so imbued with the best character 
ideals, in accordance with which what is worthy 
will draw them and what is unworthy will repel 
them, and if they have been made to realize that 



164 THE HOME. GOD MEANT 



marriage is for life, not to be entered into hastily 
or unadvisedly, but thoughtfully, reverently, and 
in the fear of God, the danger of mismating is 
small. They are all but certain to fulfill in them- 
selves the blessings of a happy marriage. 



TEACHING TRUSTWORTHINESS 165 



CHAPTER XIII 
TEACHING TRUSTWORTHINESS 

IF the right kind of companions is an impor- 
tant parental concern, it is even more im- 
portant to see to it that the children have the 
right kind of solitude. The most constant com- 
panions that people can have are their own 
thoughts. 

It is quite impossible, as, also, it is altogether 
undesirable, for young people always to be under 
the eye and under the direction of their parents. 
First steps in walking need assistance. But too 
much assistance will retard learning how to walk. 
Just so, watching that becomes anxious espio- 
nage, that breathes suspicion and distrust, will 
hinder the growth of self-determined right con- 
duct. The home teaching task is not only to 
instruct in what is right, and not only to see to it 
that the child does right, but, more deeply, to 
see to it that the child wants to do right; not 
only to take care that right is done while the 
parent is watching, but also to make sure that 
right will be done when the child is out of sight 
of father and mother. One of the biggest lessons 
that youth can learn is the lesson of the joy and 



166 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



pride of being trusted. It is worth much to 
fathers and mothers to have children who can 
be trusted, but it is worth far more, both from 
the point of view of character-building and from 
the point of view of life achievement, to the 
sons and daughters if they in their own hearts 
know that they can be trusted. 

Most of life is lived out of sight of others. 
Consider what a small portion of the twenty- 
four hours of the day is spent under the eyes of 
the home folks. Eight hours or more are spent in 
bed. Another eight hours or more are spent 
in school and study. Further hours are spent 
with playmates. Outside of mealtime and that 
part of chore time which is necessarily in full 
view of parental eyes, and the occasional mo- 
ments of face-to-face interviews in the time of 
discipline, the portion of time in which a father 
or mother can have the focus on a boy or girl 
is relatively quite small. Also, it is to be remem- 
ered that the fathers and mothers have other 
problems besides children to think about, and 
are apt to be absent-minded even while they 
seem to be looking at the children. All in all, 
the home problem is never solved if solution 
depends on surveillance. The hope that sons and 
daughters will grow gladness in the hearts of 



TEACHING TRUSTWORTHINESS 167 



fathers and mothers must depend on teaching 
them to be trustworthy. 

A certain young person was invited to join 
another in an escapade of sin. After all the 
pleasure to be gotten from it had been described 
and tantalizingly held forth, effort was made to 
get consent by setting forth the positive assur- 
ance that no one would ever know, absolutely 
no one would ever know. The answer was final 
and crushing: "I would know." Such a young 
man or woman does not need to be watched to 
be kept in the path of right. God's law is in the 
heart. In them the hearts of trusting parents 
may safely rest. Though they may be months 
and miles away from home, they will not abandon 
the standards of the home. 

There comes a time in every child's life when 
it is a great satisfaction to go into his own 
rooms and shut the door, perhaps lock it. The 
grating of the key in the lock is about the 
sweetest music that has ever been heard. It 
sings of security. The sense of being alone and 
of power to stay alone is delicious. There is no 
one to say, "Don't," or nudge to disagreeable 
tasks, or ask unpleasant questions. It is pos- 
sible to do what he pleases. 

The situation is full of possibilities for both 



168 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



good and evil. Hardly any other time is so 
important at this period as the time spent alone. 
Dominant, character-shaping tendencies are 
fashioned in that seclusion. Success or failure, 
strength or weakness of will, surrender to or 
victory over evil things, will wait upon the issues 
of that testing hour. Later in life, one must be 
self-reliant, and it is important that early in 
life the process of best self-realization should 
have its auspicious beginning and careful cul- 
tivation. 

The right of a boy or girl to privacy in the 
home is a sacred right. It is a part of their edu- 
cation in refinement and courtesy to have them 
feel that their privacy is respected as much as 
that of an adult. One should no more open, 
without warning knock, the closed door of a 
boy or girl, than so intrude upon the privacy of 
a guest. Such deference to the rights of the 
young will help the young rightly to appraise 
the finer things in home relations. Also, the 
reflection that they are trusted behind closed 
doors will stimulate in them the desire to be 
worthy of that trust. 

It is for the older, now, to fortify the younger 
against the subtle temptations of solitude. First 
impressions of sin are to the effect that acts of 



TEACHING TRUSTWORTHINESS 169 



sin are to be watched against, and that thoughts 
of sin are less serious. Many parents are very 
watchful against sins in conduct, rightly dread- 
ing, and making their children fear, scandal. 
Most people have, first and last, been kept from 
some sins by having that wholesome fear im- 
planted in their hearts. There can be no doubt 
that such fear is wholesome, and wise parents 
will see to it that in the hearts of their children 
is implanted the fear of those sins that shame 
and disgrace life. But that is not enough. Sin 
is a much deeper and more sinister and more 
dangerous thing than is realized in outward 
shame. The sorest temptation ever encoun- 
tered by man, overcome only by striving unto 
sweat of blood, was in the solitude of a garden, 
persisting even while the tempted Son of Man 
was agonizing in prayer. If the Master was so 
tempted in his solitude, how ought we to guard 
against, and how painstakingly ought we to 
teach our children to guard against, the in- 
sidious temptations of the lonely room! 

In the temple made with hands the most 
secret place was the most holy place. So ought 
it to be with boys and girls, and then it will be 
so with them as men and women. One cannot 
escape his worst spiritual enemies by being 



170 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



alone. Rather, all of the natural enemies of the 
soul are present in solitude. The Tempter is 
there in all his malice and shrewdness and 
evil purpose. The world is there, more potent 
in its subtle appeal, because there not in objec- 
tive reality but there in the blandishments of 
imagination. The flesh is there, ardent and 
imperious in its demand to have the secret hour 
for the rioting of its own debasing suggestions 
and impulses. A double portion of the Spirit 
is most needed there. 

Great pains should be taken in the fitting up 
of that private room. On the one hand, it will 
be made clear how much inner harm may come 
from having pictures conveying evil suggestions. 
Not only must these be kept from the wall. 
They should not be in the room. Whatever one 
would not like a pure-minded guest to see on his 
wall, he should not himself look at in private. 
Few snares are more insidious, more character- 
weakening, that that contained in the suggestion 
that one can safely do when alone what would 
hurt moral standing if done when others are 
seeing. The effects of such an idea are wide- 
reaching. The influence of it is toward double- 
dealing, toward willing to be one kind of person 
while appearing to be a different kind of person. 



TEACHING TRUSTWORTHINESS 171 



Such is the germ of the hypocrite in religion 
and the shark in business. 

On the other hand, there should be plenty of 
pictures that invite and stimulate the best 
thinking, pictures of good men and women, of 
father and mother, of an honored teacher, and 
others whose pictured lips will seem to be giving 
good counsel, whose eyes will seem to be a 
challenge to every unworthy thought. Like- 
wise, there should be tactful guidance in the 
selection of a private library for the owner of 
that room. It is so easy to be victimized by bad 
books. "Evil books poison the springs of 
thought much more than an evil acquaintance." 
Charles Lamb said that he felt more like asking 
grace before reading than before eating. To 
smuggle into a room a book which the reader 
would be ashamed to discuss with people of 
refinement is to invite vicious company into the 
intimacies of the inner life. The reader is hob- 
nobbing with and under the fascinating spell of 
the characters in the book. Just imagine the 
effect if the characters should suddenly step out 
of the book and say aloud the things in the 
recorded conversations of the book. What if 
the pictured people on the wall could hear, and 
also see you listening eagerly! 



172 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



But the opposite is true, also. The good 
company in good books will bring their readers 
under the spell of their personalities. Taste for 
worth in reading is a matter of cultivation. For 
the development of such taste parents should 
hold themselves largely responsible. It is theirs 
to see to it that the right books are provided, to 
encourage the reading of them, to suggest such 
as are likely to interest children and youth at 
the several stages of their growth, and so to 
guide their reading that it will be natural to 
them to want to possess and know the best books. 

There is a particular aspect of the subject of 
young people's reading that is of special serious- 
ness. That is their Sunday reading. That point 
is involved in the larger question of their whole 
spiritual development. The Lord's Day offers 
the supreme opportunity of the week for quick- 
ening the spiritual life. It ought to be a happy 
day. Making it unnaturally solemn and gloomy 
in the name of religion is terribly wrong. Little 
children ought to be made to feel that in their 
home Sunday is the best day of all the week. 
It is so in the home God meant. And a part of 
the joyousness, through all the growing years, 
should be the luxury of good reading. 

About the severest commentary that could 



TEACHING TRUSTWORTHINESS 173 



be made on anyone's intellectual life is the con- 
fession to lack of taste for anything but the 
stuff served in the Sunday supplement. No 
doubt this has some good articles, but these 
are the articles skipped by the happy buyers of 
Sunday supplements. There is a place for car- 
toons and for humorous magazines, but their 
intrusion into sacred hours will spoil, because 
they will make impossible a developing taste for 
the real luxury of Sunday reading. There are 
wide ranges of right reading in line with the 
highest purpose and privilege of the Lord's Day 
leisure and relaxation. If young people want 
adventure, heroism, dramatic situations, abun- 
dance of humor, intense human interest, along 
with the deepest devotion to Jesus Christ, let 
them read missionary biographies. There is no 
better kind of Sunday-afternoon reading for 
accomplishing the double purpose of making 
the Lord's Day holy and a delight. 

If youth is to prove worthy of trust, when 
given the fullest liberty and thrown upon its 
own resources, it is clear that there must be 
created in the youthful mind an appreciation 
of solitude, an understanding of the dangers to 
be guarded against, as also an understanding of 
the happy uses that may be made of it. 



174 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



Of course, with all the encouragement to the 
right kind of reading, there will be emphasis upon 
Bible-reading. There is decided value in reading 
the Bible in privacy. There is a better chance 
for concentration. Most people lose much of 
the joy of reading the Bible from the perfunctory, 
mind-wandering way in which they read it. 
Then, again, just as in the quiet reading of any 
cherished book one seems to be a little closer 
to its author, so also in the reading of God's 
Word when alone in the quiet of one's own 
room the Christian may have a warmer reali- 
zation of the bond between him and his Lord. 
There is further advantage in tying up that 
experience with one's private retreat. It helps 
to create an atmosphere, a room atmosphere, in 
which it is easier to think good thoughts and 
harder to yield to the suggestion of evil thoughts. 

Jesus spent his solitudes in meditation and 
prayer. The mountain retreat whither he had 
gone to spend the night in prayer must have 
had a precious association for him. Children 
like to pray. Of course their Christian parents 
will encourage them to pray, will lead them into 
a deeper and more intelligent experience of 
prayer. Into their opening minds should go 
the suggestion that, like Jesus, it is good for every 



TEACHING TRUSTWORTHINESS 175 

follower of his to pray in secret. He told us to 
go into our rooms and shut the door and pray 
to our heavenly Father who hears in secret. 
It is good for a child to be taught to pray, taught 
to pray about everything, taught that God is 
interested in whatever his children are inter- 
ested in, taught that his children ought to keep 
out of their minds, as invading enemies, what- 
ever they are unwilling to pray about, taught 
that it is right to pray to God about every- 
thing that it is right for us to want. Also, it is 
good for a child to be taught that there are 
other values in prayer besides getting what we 
ask for, taught that the habit of prayer is good 
for the soul, that prayer is a means of closer 
acquaintance with God, a means of quickening 
desire to want to know God better, a means of 
helping to love the best things and of helping 
to hate the worst things, that prayer in the 
privacy of one's room makes that room a place 
where it is easier to be good and harder to be 
bad. 

If only our boys and girls can be taught that 
among the many satisfactions which it is their 
right to have from going into their rooms and 
shutting the door, one of the most inviting is 
to be alone where their heavenly Father sees 



176 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



in secret and hears in secret. That will keep 
the atmosphere behind the closed door pure and 
sweet and wholesome. 

Imagine, by contrast, a man weary and wor- 
ried from the day's work and problems coming 
home to find a serpent coiled to strike him, a 
vicious dog snarling and snapping at his heels, 
a thief behind his door with club raised to smite 
him. His home, instead of being the refuge 
he longed for, has been turned into a menace 
to his life. There are those who by their habits 
of thought make that kind of place for their 
souls. They no sooner enter their rooms and 
shut their doors than a troop of debasing 
thoughts rush upon and overpower them. All 
the memories of the room, all the suggestions 
that come from old habits, conspire to possess 
and dominate downward. 

It is not so with the sons and daughters of 
God, used to another kind of solitude, where 
every picture on the wall, every book on the 
shelf or table, every moment of meditation, the 
very place of accustomed kneeling in prayer, all 
unite to create warmth and welcome and the 
sense of entering into rest. 



HOME HEIGHTS 



177 



CHAPTER XIV 
HOME HEIGHTS 

WHEN a child you used to be held aloft by 
father or mother so you could see over 
the heads of the crowd as the circus parade 
went by. The highest use of home is that it be 
made a perching place from which to see the 
pageant love of God. 

Moses was invited to come to the top of the 
mount that he might see the glory of God as, 
in manifestation accommodated to his capacity, 
that glory went by. 6 'And Jehovah passed by 
before him, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, 
a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and 
abundant in lovingkindness and truth; keeping 
lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity 
and transgression and sin; and that will by no 
means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of 
the fathers upon the children, and upon the 
children's children, upon the third and upon the 
fourth generation." 

That is wondrous love which the Father has 
bestowed upon the home. It is love from what- 
ever angle the stirring sentences are regarded. 
This is not the place for extended exposition, 



178 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



but space may be taken to suggest the effect of 
the connective 4 4 and": 4 4 and that will by no 
means clear the guilty." We are apt to think 
that 4 4 but" would be the proper connective. 
Not so. It is not disjunctive, but conjunctive, 
not contrast, but climax of continuing kindness. 

The forgiveness of sin is not the only blessed- 
ness of God's love. The greater blessedness is the 
destruction of sin, root and branch. Sin cannot 
be treated, in any program of love, as something 
to be passed over lightly. The love of God can 
tolerate no other attitude toward guilt than that 
of uncompromising and unalterable hostility. 
It will by no means clear the guilty. It must 
condemn and doom sin to destruction. How- 
ever forgiveness is regarded and received, it must 
be understood that God has provided for it in 
such way as to carry forward a program making 
for righteousness, that has no room in it for any 
tolerance of or concession to guilt. That is the 
wonder of God's grace. He is just and the 
justifier of the ungodly. He will forgive sin 
unto the uttermost and, 44 and," he will by no 
means clear the guilty. The fiat of forgiveness 
is that sin must go. When the grace of God's 
forgiveness has reached its goal, there will be 
no more sin to forgive. 



HOME HEIGHTS 



179 



How insufferably silly and stupid, therefore, 
is that home attitude toward sin which main- 
tains an easy-going tolerance of things in the 
lives of boys and girls which are plainly for- 
bidden of God! Sometimes parents are selfish 
enough to think that they love their children too 
much to punish them or even blame them 
seriously for their faults. As if love could be 
comfortable in seeing blemishes grow in its 
object. The truth is that it is the sheerest self- 
ishness to let go uncorrected whatever is wrong 
in the life of a dependent loved one. Love will 
by no means clear the guilty. Suffering a child 
to grow up in tolerated sin is not only wrong to 
the child; it is leaving an entail of liability to 
the same way of living to the next generation. 
For the tendency is always to pass on to our 
children what we learned in our own child- 
hood homes. No home can be what it ought 
to be, what God meant it to be, if within 
its government there is lacking God's attitude 
toward sin. No home can be ruled by real love 
save only as there is a growing family horror and 
hatred of whatever is a grief to God. 

There is in the setting of the quotation above 
a commonly overlooked angle of the heredity 
question. Immediately after Moses had wit- 



180 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



nessed the procession of God's glory, the glory 
that is goodness, abundant in loving-kindness 
and truth, he fell on his face and implored God 
to take us for his inheritance. Rightly regarded, 
there is a flood of light there. For heredity 
depends as much upon the heir as upon the 
ancestry. Two men inheriting equally poor 
farms may become, one prosperous, the other 
land poor, according to their respective ways of 
handling their inheritances. That in the hands 
of an ambitious, hard-working heir will be 
transformed into an estate of beauty and pro- 
ductivity. That in the hands of a sluggish, 
loafing, dissipating, self-indulgent heir will go 
from bad to worse. Much depends on what 
kind of heir gets the inheritance. Moses showed 
us the path of hope. Let God be the heir. Let 
him take us and take our children for his inherit- 
ance! 

It is through our fathers and mothers that we 
have learned, and it ought to be through us as 
parents that our children learn, many of the 
best things to know about God. When God in 
his Word would teach us what we are to believe 
about him, he uses these dear, tender home ties 
to tell our hearts just how he feels toward us. 

He knows what life has taught us to think of 



HOME HEIGHTS 



181 



mother. And so he says that " as one whom 
his mother comforteth," he will comfort us. The 
heart idea in the word which Jesus used for 
Comforter in his promise of the Holy Spirit is 
all one with the child idea of a mother. Com- 
forter, paraclete, means a helper called to one's 
side, as in an emergency, as by a cry of fear or of 
pain. Just like mothers, God is never far from 
us at any time, is always within call, "a very 
present help in trouble." Very early in life, the 
child learns that all he has to do is to squeal, and, 
night or day, mother is right there to comfort. 
God wants us to think of him as precisely the 
kind of helper a mother is who rushes to the 
child whose pitiful cry for help she has just 
heard. 

After the same manner also he has taught us 
to think of him in terms of an understanding, 
sympathetic father. 
"Like as a father pitieth his children, 

So Jehovah pitieth them that fear him. 

For he knoweth our frame ; 

He remembereth that we are dust." 

Take your trouble to God. He understands. 
He has a father's insight into a child's mental 
reaction to his trouble. 

A minister was trying to help a dying man get 



182 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



hold of the love of the Father in heaven, as made 
known to us in his Son, Jesus Christ. But the 
man could not see it. He wanted to see it, but 
for all his eager effort to understand, he was 
baffled. Then the minister remembered how the 
man's father and he had been such wonderful 
companions, like David and Jonathan in their 
love for each other. During these weeks of 
sickness, that dear companion father had been 
constantly at his bedside. Could he under- 
stand his father's love for him, his father's 
sympathy with him, his father's sacrificing him- 
self for him? He could understand that. The 
light in his face showed that he could under- 
stand that. And then he saw through his 
earthly father up to his heavenly Father. That 
is the glory of fathers and mothers — to be such 
fathers and mothers as will help their boys and 
girls to understand how God loves them. 

There was a vacant lot next to the particular 
woman's home. The gang played much on the 
vacant lot. The lads often made themselves a 
nuisance, and, after the manner of their kind, 
when they saw how much of a nuisance they 
were, they thought out ways to be more of a 
nuisance. When the woman called through the 
window that they should cease annoying her, 



HOME HEIGHTS 



183 



they felt that they had not played in vain. 
They were enjoying their reward in her mani- 
fested irritation. If they made faces or said 
scornful words or threw things, and the woman 
started for the door, they were far hence when 
she came where they had been. The woman de- 
termined that she would get hold of one of the 
boys, a leader in the meanness of their mischief, 
and see what she would see. So she came upon 
the playground suddenly, and there was no time 
to escape. But the one she was after was not 
there that day. Then she asked the others for 
the name of the bad boy's father and mother. 
"Please, ma'am, he has no father and mother. 
They are both dead." Then all the woman's 
wrath melted away. She had only sympathy 
and tenderness for the boy who had no father 
and mother. No wonder he was bad. Poor boy ! 

The minister was talking to a member of his 
church who was in bad repute among the mer- 
chants. His bills were unpaid. It was the rule 
of the shops where he worked that bills must be 
paid. If the merchants complained, he would 
lose his job. The minister borrowed the money 
and lent it to the man that he might pay his 
debts and keep his job. But the trouble came 
back, and, besides, the minister lost his money. 



184 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



Then the man told the minister how he came 
to fall a victim to drink. His father and mother 
had died when he was a babe, and he had 
never had anyone to teach him what was 
right. He could not remember when he had not 
been a neglected, do-as-you-please child. And so 
he started wrong and kept going wrong. 

But others go wrong who have had fathers 
and mothers to teach them what is right. Not 
infrequently from the very best of homes one 
will go astray. Only those to whom life has 
introduced such a trouble can understand how 
hard it is for Christian parents to have one of 
their children go wrong. 

But what are fathers and mothers for, in such 
case, if not to show the wayward mind the kind 
of God they have? Teaching a grossly sinful 
son or daughter about God is quite a different 
thing from teaching an innocent child about God. 
If it be a harder teaching task, it is also more 
illuminating as touching the character of God. 
We learn any lesson best when we have to teach 
it. To prepare a lesson to recite it is far easier 
than to prepare a lesson to teach it. When a 
father or mother has to teach the lesson of God's 
love to a prodigal son or daughter, new meanings 
of that love are apprehended by the teacher. 



HOME HEIGHTS 



185 



The stricken-hearted parent has some compen- 
sation for the sufferings endured on account of 
a wayward child in the loftier lessons of the 
surpassing love of God learned in teaching the 
penitent prodigal the way back to a new and 
deeper understanding of how God loves us 
in Jesus Christ. 

When parents who want to be good, and try 
to be good, and seek to train their children after 
them to keep the way of the Lord, have 
to face the shame and humiliation of scandal, 
they need not think that an unheard-of thing 
has happened to them, or that an unbearable 
burden has fallen upon their backs, or that an 
irremediable loss has overtaken them. It hap- 
pens to many of God's saints. God is with them 
in all that trouble, as in every other. They 
may have nothing to reproach themselves with, 
for such things do happen in spite of utmost 
faithfulness, although also the sense of having 
come short in sympathetic companionship may 
provoke to a deeper sympathy for the wayward 
one. The case is not hopeless. God will not 
forget his covenant. The call is for a new and 
greater effort to bring the wandering one back 
to God. 

The fact is that under the most favorable 



186 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



circumstances, and with no occasion for special 
worry, we all need to go over and over again 
what should be the first principles of our faith. 
And that is much more true now than it used to 
be when catechetical instruction was more com- 
mon than it is to-day. 

One of the snares set for the unwary by the 
Tempter is the idea that when sin has over- 
taken us we forfeit our right to a place among 
the people of God. Many who have fallen into 
scandalous sin do not come back because they 
are ashamed to come back, because they think 
that taking their place among Christians would 
only hurt the Church. Even among Christians 
who do not fall into scandalous sin, there is a 
neglect of close walk with God as a result of a 
feeling of estrangement because of something 
in the life which, while it does not disgrace us, 
does make us uncomfortable in God's presence. 

They only learn the gospel who use it every 
day, who daily bathe their souls in the forgiving 
love of God, who take the sinner's place at the 
foot of the cross and feel anew that their sins are 
washed away in the blood of the Lamb. It is 
this assurance that the blood of Christ keeps 
cleansing us from all unrighteousness that en- 
ables us more and more to know God in Jesus 



HOME HEIGHTS 



187 



Christ. Accordingly, it is one of the greatest 
lessons as parents that we have to teach our 
children that they must keep coming back, that 
they may keep coming back. The heart of the 
parent must be steeped in gospel truth. There 
is no greater home achievement than to show 
a wretchedly sinful son that God loves him, and 
is able to save him to the uttermost. And this 
is the highest reach of home affection, to make 
of it a summit from which to see the far-ranging, 
forgiving, restoring love of God. 

It is one of the extraordinary qualities of the 
pearl of parables that it succeeds in making 
us have a more tender feeling for the boy who 
left home for the far country than for the more 
dutiful son who stayed at home. Why is that? 
It is not because the prodigal was better. On 
the contrary, we feel that his conduct was 
worse. It is not because we fail to approve and 
appreciate the moral qualities of the elder 
brother. The explanation is love. We are made 
to feel, as Jesus meant us to feel, that the 
penitent prodigal saw and responded to his 
father's love, that this boy had come to hate 
the sins that had made his father mourn, that, 
though his sins had been as scarlet, still even for 
him there was no place like home. In all the 



188 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



world there was no man like his father. He 
would arise and go to his father. 

That is what home ought to do for all. On 
the one hand, it ought to instill a hatred and 
horror of sin, to create an atmosphere in which 
it grows easier to do good and harder to do 
wrong. On the other hand, the home God meant 
will keep alive the feeling, and continually in- 
tensify the feeling, that when we do go wrong 
there is forgiveness with God; that no matter how 
far we go wrong, God's love is following us and 
wanting us to come home to him. 

In a moment's lull in the thunderstorm, a sharp 
rap was heard at the door of the manse. It was 
midnight, and callers were not expected. The 
surprise, tinged a bit with fear, was increased 
when the man at the door was recognized. He 
had rebuffed the minister at the meeting that 
night, and a friend had advised the minister 
against further speech with him about religion, 
explaining that the man had been in the asylum 
and was showing symptons of mental break- 
down. 

But the fear was soon turned into joy. For 
the man had come to uncover his sin. His 
home was a place of sin. The woman living 
with him was not his wife. They both felt 



HOME HEIGHTS 



189 



convicted of their sin, were deeply penitent, 
wanted to get right with God. Would God 
forgive them? Could such as they build a home 
in righteousness? 

" 'Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall 
be as white as snow; though they be red like 
crimson, they shall be as wool. ' " 

"That describes my sin all right, but is there 
really forgiveness for such great sin as mine has 
been?" 

6 'Our sins are forgiven not because they are 
little but because God is big. David committed 
such a sin as yours, and it was aggravated by his 
breaking up another man's home, yet God 
forgave him. Do not try to make your sin seem 
little. Any sin is big, and yours you have 
rightly regarded as a great sin. But it can be 
forgiven. And other sins in your life, which 
seem to you in comparison with this sin as 
hardly worth mentioning, are heinous in God's 
sight and must be cleansed away, just as all sin 
must be cleansed away. 

"How can that be? What must I do to be 
forgiven, that I may start my home again as a 
man clean in God's sight?" 

44 Just what every sinner must do: Repent of 
your sins and receive Jesus Christ by faith for 



190 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



your salvation. Begin by taking and trusting 
the gospel that he died for our sins according to 
the Scriptures. The thief on the cross trusted 
him, and was forgiven and assured of his sal- 
vation. Will you trust Jesus for your salvation 
just as that thief did?" 

"I will. What else must I do?" 

"You are not really trusting Jesus unless you 
repent of your sins. He does not offer to save 
anyone except by the sinner's giving up and 
forsaking every known sin. Obedience is the 
essence of trust. Do what he says. And he 
says, as touching your sins, "Go thy way . . . 
sin no more. ' And don't forget how he says in 
the same breath, 4 Thy faith hath saved thee.' 
Repentance and faith are intertwined, one and 
inseparable. Are you willing so to trust Jesus 
Christ as to turn away from every known sin, 
because he requires it? " 

"With all my heart, I can say yes to that. 
And as proof of my sincerity, I will say that I 
came here to ask you to come and marry me to 
the woman with whom I have been living as 
her husband. So far as wrong can be made 
right, I will make restitution." 

Next day, a license having been procured, 
the minister and an elder went quietly to that 



HOME HEIGHTS 



191 



home, where the penitent twain were made one 
in God's sight, taking upon themselves the vows 
of holy marriage. And they kept them. And 
God blessed them and gave them peace and 
happiness in purity. The man had found the 
asylum that his soul needed. What had seemed 
like symptoms of insanity, this time, were but 
the manifestations of conviction of sin. 

Homes that have been reduced to the depths 
of sin and misery can be exalted to the heights 
of righteousness and love and happiness. Alas, 
that so many homes are ruined by little things, 
wretchedly named incompatibility, when God 
can take a home ruined by sin and upon its ruins 
build a palace of purity and felicity! What is 
needed to cure incompatibilities, to heal the 
hurt of sharp wounds, to harmonize diverse dis- 
positions, to turn bitterness into sweet waters 
of life, is a little common sense with a lot of grace. 



192 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



CHAPTER XV 
WHAT HOME IS FOR 

AMONG all the different motives governing 
xjL entrance upon any enterprise there is al- 
ways one dominant motive. This dominant 
motive is not by any means the same in the 
minds of different people engaged in the same 
enterprise. If a group of farmers were asked to 
give the reasons for their occupation, the answers 
would vary. Some became farmers as a matter 
of course. Their fathers were farmers, they grew 
up on a farm, and they never thought of 
being anything else. One might answer that 
he thought the country the best place to rear a 
family; another, that he never could be happy 
save where he could work out of doors; still 
another, that though he was city-born and reared, 
considerations of health forced him to out-of- 
door occupation. 

If a group of physicians were asked to give 
the reason for choice of their profession, their 
answers would not be the same. One might say 
that his childhood hero was the doctor. He 
always wanted to be like him. Another might 
declare that the very nature of the profession 



WHAT HOME IS FOR 



193 



appealed to him; its studies were congenial, its 
tasks and opportunities appealing. One might 
even dare to say that he thought that for him it 
was the best chance possible to help along the 
Kingdom. 

So it would be in the survey of all the walks 
of life. Motives would vary, but in every case 
there would be one dominant motive. Inci- 
dentally, there would be many satisfactions 
coming along with the sense of working toward 
the main goal. The man who is keeping out of 
doors for the sake of his health, while rejoicing 
in physical gains would at the same time have 
delight in successful crops, in the gracious com- 
panionship of nature, in the joy of doing some- 
thing worth while for the world, in doing his bit 
to give the world its daily bread, in the con- 
sciousness of being a coworker with God. And 
that ought to be, may be, the dominant motive 
in every life. It is this motive, and ultimately 
this motive alone, that keeps life wholly worth 
living. 

If there be one single satisfaction, standing 
out from all other home satisfactions, and above 
them all, it comes with the sense of having 
reared sons and daughters who are worth while 
to the world. 



194 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



A part of the joy in having children is the 
crown of joy in seeing children well settled in 
life, having chosen suitable vocations, diligent 
in making themselves fit, earnest, and conse- 
crated in the pursuit of calling, deserving and 
getting the praise of men sometimes, and always 
the praise of God. From the time of their birth, 
therefore, these little ones are to be thought of 
as God's little men and women, to be trained 
for him, to be reared with his will so much in 
their minds, that when it comes time to choose 
a vocation, the big question may be, "What 
does God want me to do? " 

It is a noble longing in many parental hearts 
that their children may stand before God as 
Samuel was meant to stand before God. Some 
mothers, even before the birth of their children, 
have dedicated them to specific work for God. 
A young man, at the end of his college course, 
moved with a deep gratitude for the home 
sacrifices that had made it possible, wrote to 
his mother warmly pouring out his heart in 
appreciation of his dear home folks. In answer 
the mother wrote: " My dear lad, your letter 
means much to me. You were my first-born. 
In you I first felt the wonder of motherhood. 
When they placed you in my arms, and I gave 



WHAT HOME IS FOR 



195 



you my first mother kiss, I breathed a prayer, 
an earnest prayer for you. I asked God then 
that he would make you not a rich man, 
not a great man, but that he would make you 
a good man. If you become that, you will be 
what, most of all, I want in you." Blessed 
among men is he who has such a mother. 

While parents may feel free to dedicate their 
children to specific work for God, they are not 
free to use pressure in that direction. All souls 
are God's. He alone knows for what calling a 
youth is best capacitated. The right of free 
choice in the determination of life work is sacred 
for all young people. Some very disastrous mis- 
takes have been made by constraining sons or 
daughters into callings which God never meant 
them for. A certain man who is now a very 
successful dairyman spent some miserable years 
first in trying to be a good minister of the 
gospel, just because he knew that it had been 
the passionate longing of his mother to have 
him a preacher. 

Over against that was the determined effort 
of a father and mother to prevent their daughter 
from becoming a missionary. She felt God call- 
ing her to be a missionary. Her parents did all 
in their power to make her refuse the call of 



196 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



God. But she did not refuse. In the end her 
decision was vindicated. She became a useful 
missionary. Both urgency and limit lie in 
parental responsibility for the child's choice of 
vocation. The urgency lies in the duty to fill 
the young heart with such a love for God, and 
such a longing to know and do his will as the 
supreme good of life, that the one great aspira- 
tion of life will be to be and do and go and stay 
as God wills. The limit lies at the line of per- 
sonal decision. Parents must train themselves 
to keep their hands off the conscience of youth 
as from the Ark of God. Stretching forth the 
hand there, however good in intention, is as the 
sin of Uzzah. 

We used to say that the minister is called of 
God, and we still ought to say that. To this, 
however, we are rightfully coming to add the 
conviction that whatever the vocation, one 
should choose it as if called of God. We send 
as missionaries not only preachers and physicians 
and teachers but also farmers and foresters and 
mechanics. Mark that we send them as mis- 
sionaries, and young men with taste for such 
vocations are hearing the missionary call, hold- 
ing out willing hands, and saying, with as much 
of the spirit of consecration as the man called to 



WHAT HOME IS FOR 



197 



be a minister of the Word, " Here am I ; send me." 
If servants of Christ may be 4 4 called" to such 
diverse occupations on the mission field, why 
should we not regard all vocations at the home 
base as within the callings of God? When 
every kind of occupation is regarded as a part 
of the Kingdom enterprise, to be pursued as in 
the service of Jesus Christ, then the lines on 
which Christian youth are to make decision 
touching the field of their life work will be more 
clearly drawn. 

Altogether happy and helpful may be the 
home counsels concerning the future of the chil- 
dren. The more home conditions can be devel- 
oped so as to make choice of life work both 
natural and spiritual, the nearer will the ideal 
be approached. By natural choice is meant free 
choice in accordance with taste and aptitude. By 
spiritual choice is meant free choice in accord- 
ance with the desire to fulfill the plan of God. 

Circumstances beyond control may force de- 
cision against preference and in opposition to 
what is felt to be the most promising field of 
success and usefulness. If such turn to one's 
life is forced, as by the necessities of others, as 
by hindrances that cannot be overcome in the 
direction of desire, the thing to do is to thank 



198 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



God and take courage. The voices that speak 
seem to say that it is the will of God. If so, 
life's larger good and greater use must He that 
way. No life is endowed with the capacity to 
do merely one or two or even a few things. The 
marvel of man is that he can fit himself to do 
many of a multitude of things. 

The ability to be successful in one thing in- 
volves the ability to become successful in many 
things. It is a foolish mistake to suppose that 
if life cannot go forward in its preferred channel, 
the best chance of life is missed. Early taste 
and early aptitudes often fail to reveal the larger 
possibilities of endowment. Often men become 
eminent in directions of which not only there was 
no early promise but apparent indication of 
lack of ability. So that, after all, the major 
factor in determining what life work is best 
becomes not the natural but the spiritual. Both 
are important, but the spiritual should be domi- 
nant. Therefore family counsels about choice 
of life work for the developing children will be 
greatly aided by making them a matter of 
habitual and earnest prayer. 

There is one form in which parental preference 
sometimes manifests itself in a particularly 
offensive and hurtful manner. For example, the 



WHAT HOME IS FOR 



199 



desire of a father to have a son become his as- 
sociate in business is a perfectly natural and 
proper desire. When such a relationship does 
develop, such a father and such a son are favored 
beyond many. They ought to thank God seven 
times a day. 

It has already been mentioned that overhead 
pressure in the home toward any vocation is 
something to be guarded against. There is a 
more subtle thing than that to be guarded against. 
Partiality for one child may unconsciously lead 
to giving a better chance to the favorite than 
to the others. Partiality produces unhappiness 
in the home, and on that account alone will be 
rigorously guarded against by all good and 
honest parents. The Bible gives an unlovely 
picture of the brood of evils growing out of 
secretly cherished partiality. "Isaac loved 
Esau, because he did eat of his venison: and 
Rebekah loved Jacob." Both parents cherished 
a wickedly partial love for their respective 
favorites, and all-around suffering followed. But 
worst of all, the natural evil in the hearts of the 
boys was fostered by that vicious parental 
partiality. From that day to this, partiality in 
the home has never failed to leave its blight. 

But home unhappiness, lamentable as it is, is 



200 



THE HOME GOD MEANT 



not the worst thing about such partiality. The 
bitterness entailed by the sense of injustice, bad 
as it is, is not the worst thing about it. Alto- 
gether the most pernicious thing about it is that 
the unfavored child is not given a full, fair 
chance for development. All children in the 
same home are not equally gifted, and cannot 
be expected to occupy equally large spheres of 
service. It is often true that the less gifted 
occupies the more conspicious position. It some- 
times happens that the less deserving gets the 
better chance. True enough, family fortunes 
may change, and advantages given to older 
children may not be possible for the younger. 
Or it may be that in the youth of the older chil- 
dren poverty ruled, while plenty came along at 
the right time to give the younger children 
superior advantages. Such differences carry no 
sting. It is the difference that plain partiality 
makes that does the mischief, that ought to 
have and can have no place in the home God 
meant. 

There is a very beautiful tradition in certain 
choice homes. The future of each child is of so 
much importance in the aspirations of the whole 
family, that all together are ready for any sacri- 
fice to give the eldest child the best possible 



WHAT HOME IS FOR 



201 



chance for an education. Then, when school 
days are finished for that member of the family, 
and life is established in the earning period, this 
young breadwinner turns in a good portion of 
income for the education of the younger brother 
or sister, and so the service keeps going the 
round of the family. In due time all the chil- 
dren have found their place in the world's work, 
and so long as any of them live, they are 
bound together in ever increasing family affec- 
tion. Among such there is never any quarrel 
over family inheritance. They have made for 
themselves complete defense against the covet- 
ousness that all too often turns brothers into 
bitter enemies. 

While it is not right either to coerce decision 
in the selection of vocation or to withhold from 
the humblest member of the family the fullest 
and fairest chance for self-development, it is 
right and a high responsibility to surround the 
children with such influences as will invite their 
souls. The books that are read, the pictures 
that are on the walls, the companions that are 
encouraged, the guests that are frequently in- 
vited, the admirations that are often expressed 
in the family conversations, all do their quiet 
work in awakening the interest and inspiring 



202 THE HOME GOD MEANT 



the ambitions of the children. The story of an 
inland home from which went several sons to 
become sailors is eloquent of the legitimate and 
dutiful ways in which parents may do their 
proper part in helping their children to choose 
callings that will both make the sons and daugh- 
ters good and useful men and women and bless 
the old age of the parents themselves. It was 
found that these sailor boys had grown up in a 
home where there was a picture of an ocean 
scene, a beautiful and stirring picture, arresting 
to the eye of every visitor, calling forth admiring 
comments. 

It was once the ambition of almost every 
devout home to have one of its sons a preacher 
of the gospel. There was little lack in the supply 
of candidates for the ministry, no lack at all 
due to absence of ambition to become such on 
the part of young men. Why was that? In 
part, because then the preacher was the parson, 
the chief person of the community, usually the 
best educated, the most traveled, the most 
talked about, the most admired. His picture 
was that most frequently before the imagination 
of the young. And now? In all too few homes 
the picture of a good minister of Jesus Christ is 
kept before the imagination of the young. On 



WHAT HOME IS FOR 



203 



the contrary, an altogether different picture is 
playing before that imagination. The greater 
concern is not that home influences should con- 
spire to invite all young men into the ministry, 
although more, very much more, of that kind of 
home influence is needed. The greater concern 
should be that such home pictures will abound 
as will capture the imagination of the young to 
enlist definitely in the service of Jesus Christ, 
somewhere, that any calling considered at all 
will have as its major requirement that it offers 
the most inviting chance to invest life as Jesus 
Christ would want it invested. 

When that situation is developed there need 
be no anxiety about who will be ministers, or 
who will be missionaries, or who will be mer- 
chants, or physicians, or farmers, or Congress- 
men. The Master will say what each shall do, 
and in the doing of that, whatever it happens to 
be, will be the full glory of living. In the measure 
that such conditions prevail, the question of a 
choice of life work sloughs off its perplexities 
and simplifies toward an appreciation of where 
the most urgent need is. To create an atmos- 
phere in which children grow up, and get their 
minds opened, and realize their individuality, 
and look upward for their leadership, counting 



204 



THE HOME GOD MEANT 



all things but loss for the excellency of the knowl- 
edge of Christ's will in their lives, is the highest 
achievement possible to any home. 

That way lies the road to recompense of 
reAYard for all the toil and the patience and the 
pain and the renunciation involved in having 
children. In such a home it is realized that God 
gives back "good measure, pressed down, shaken 
together, running over," into the bosoms of 
parents. The bosom is the storehouse of recom- 
pense of reAYard not into their bins, not into 
their banks, but into their bosoms. A man sows 
wheat in his field, and reaps good measure and 
fills his bins with wheat. A man sows money 
in his investments, wisely selected, and he reaps 
returns by income for increase of his bank bal- 
ance. Bins and banks are storehouses of rewards 
in kind, not recompense of reward. This rich 
man sows the wealth of his life in children. All 
his life on relatively small income, he managed 
to put ten thousand dollars and more into the 
education of his children. In his old age that 
ten thousand dollars would look mighty good to 
hini. But he does not expect or want a dollar 
back. He wants recompense of reward ; he wants 
"good measure, pressed down, shaken together, 
running over," not in his bins, nor yet in his 



WHAT HOME IS FOR 



205 



bank, but in his bosom. The character, the 
occupations, the usefulness, the happiness, of 
his children, the onward flow of his lifeblood 
through their veins in the service of Jesus Christ, 
constitute for him the blessedness of life. 

To get married and stay married until death 
divides; to live together after God's ordinance 
of marriage ; to love, honor, cherish, and comfort 
each other ; to see the distant goal and embrace its 
promise afar off ; to do each a proper part, now 
individually, now jointly, and always in loving 
cooperation ; to lay by in store for the future by 
proper thrift; to keep God always in the midst 
and in control ; to honor him with their substance 
and in ever-expanding service; to have and rear 
children; to love and lead these into the King- 
dom and into capacity service for the Kingdom; 
to make father and mother love a progressive 
demonstration of the love of God; to see chil- 
dren, well mated and happily married, to per- 
petuate their name and their Christian ideals — 
these and suchlike things form the highway to 
the home God meant for man, whom he made 
4 4 in his own image, . . . male and female.' 5 



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